Tide might have to answer for more than bad football

A few weeks ago, Albert Means didn't mean much to most folks. He was No. 91 in the Alabama game program, a backup defensive tackle. If you look far enough down the list of the Crimson Tide's final statistics, you'll find Means' modest totals for 2000, his freshman season: seven games played, 18 tackles, two for loss.

A player with a lot of potential.

Too bad he'll never play another down for the Tide. Too bad he'll be remembered not as Albert Means, but as the player who allegedly was sold to Alabama by two of his high school coaches for $200;000.

Don't blame Means. He was a 6-4, 353-pound pawn, the unfortunate face shoved before our eyes to show just how bad the sport can get when coaches and schools become greedy. Means didn't know about the backroom brokering orchestrated by two high school coaches he trusted.

Former Memphis Trezevant High assistant Milton Kirk says he and Trezevant coach Lynn Lang cooked up the idea of dealing the signing rights of their prized bauble, Means, who was considered by some to be the nation's top high school defensive tackle. Lang denies the accusation he received $200,000 from Alabama to steer Means to Tuscaloosa. It seems Kirk never received his cut of the loot, which is one reason he's squawking.

You'd like to think this is an isolated incident, but clearly it isn't. Not too long before we learned about Means, a story broke about a University of Kentucky assistant who confessed to mailing $1,400 in money orders to a coach at Memphis Melrose High, presumably to curry his favor so he would send a bright and shiny high school player to Lexington.

It sounds like there's a problem in Memphis, for sure, but these money-grabbers had nothing on Alabama's former coaching staff. This was a program running amok. Its assistant head coach, Ronnie Cottrell, had been censured for fishy recruiting activities. And the staff's inability to stick with an offensive philosophy led to a meltdown in 2000--a 3-8 record that was the program's worst since 1957.

But the revelations of how Alabama procured Means are the most disturbing and potentially damning for a program that was on probation once in the 1990s.

The folks at Alabama must hope new Tide coach Dennis Franchione has a big broom and dustpan to clean up the mess left by former coach Mike DuBose and his staff.

"The biggest thing you feel sorry for is the young man," Franchione says. "Don't put too much value into this yet. I think it's people making accusations, and it certainly doesn't mean that it's fact yet. I don't know how much of it is or isn't."

The NCAA is sniffing around, and the stench might be enough to knock out the gumshoes from Indianapolis. Means isn't the only Tide player who some think was obtained unethically. Florida has alleged that offensive lineman Justin Smiley, who was in the same recruiting class as Means, came to Tuscaloosa under dubious terms. Other SEC schools supposedly have told on the Tide.

This all has the feel of the old Southwest Conference, in which schools ratted on each other, and the race to lead the league in NCAA violations typically was as hot as the action on the field.

In the middle of the mess is Means. His only crime was being a talented high school football player. Right now, Means should be sweating in anonymity in a spacious weight room on some college campus, getting ready to fulfill his potential.

Instead, Means is home in Memphis after withdrawing from Alabama. He plans to meet with coaches at Memphis and Tennessee State about enrolling, and he hopes, because of the circumstances, the NCAA will not make him sit out a season before he is eligible to play.

Let's hope he gets his wish.

Staff writer Tom Dienhart covers college football for THE SPORTING NEWS. E-mail him at tsntsd@aol.com. Go to the polls

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