In Means' case it was proved in a U.S. federal court in Memphis in June 2005 that the braggadocio Young, not even an Alabama alum, provided the cash to entice Lang in 2000 to direct the hotshot prospect to Bama.

Young denies the charge even as he faces a prison term, but from the luxury vehicles being driven and the federal convictions Young faces, it is somewhat a foregone conclusion that big money exchanged hands in the hopes of obtaining flesh that is mobile, hostile, and agile.

A great deal of money reached Lang - as well as Means and his family - thanks to Lang's position as a high school coach, which he parlayed to prospects on the auction block.

While Lang was busy peddling high school stars on the black market to prominent college football programs all over the U.S., the competing colleges backstab each other in an effort to get a leg up on rival football programs.

In the Means case, the facts are still muddled, but one intrepid lawyer has stumbled into the case and promises to upset the profitable, draconian cart of the NCAA - the independent agency which regulates and rules college sports like the dictatorial dynasty it is.

To anyone and everyone who listens -including a predisposed "hanging" jury in Tuscaloosa, the home base of the University of Alabama - attorney Tommy Gallion launches into a tirade about how the NCAA ruined and defamed his client, former University of Alabama assistant football coach Ronnie Cottrell, by conspiring with a rival coach, Phil Fulmer of Tennessee, to implicate UA in the competition in Memphis, known as a "cesspool" of recruiting.

Ironically, the NCAA was created at the urging of Pres. Teddy Roosevelt in 1904 when unregulated college football was rife with mayhem and violence on the fledgling gridiron. Specifically, Teddy threatened to terminate college football due to the rampant use of the flying wedge, unless football cleaned up its act.

The result was the creation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association which has grown into one of the most powerful and richest organizations in the US -a veritable metaphoric flying wedge itself when it comes to investigating and to punishing its member institutions - and to ordering nickname changes.

Gallion, who has about as much respect for Coach Fulmer as he does for something on the bottom of his Cole-Hahn tassel loafers after walking through a greyhound kennel at Milton McGregor's VictoryLand, tells the story that the NCAA conspired with Fulmer to destroy the UA football program in the Means incident and that the FBI and a federal grand jury in Memphis are also implicated in the Machiavellian plot to doom the once-legendary Bama football program to an abyss of mediocrity.

Now, where Teddy left off a 100 years ago, steps in Mr. Gallion -and the NCAA had better watch out because Gallion may not brandish the big stick of the US‚ 26th president and he certainly does not speak softly. Gallion has a sharp wit and a tongue to match which he uses like a flamethrower against his legal opponents, in this particular incident, the NCAA, coach Fulmer, and one obscure college football recruiting analyst, Tom Culpepper.

Gallion and fellow barrister Delaine Mountain of Tuscaloosa - the other half of the tag-team tandem known as the legal Dream Team scapegoated Culpepper, the last defendant left standing in Tuscaloosa County Court judge Steve Wilson's jurisdiction, to the tune of a whopping $30 million hit after the NCAA skated -and coach Fulmer was a no-show - thanks in large part to some specious rulings by judge Wilson.

The extravagant judgment, the largest in Tuscaloosa County tort history, left poor, emotionally and financially, Culpepper stunned and shocked after a two week roller coaster trial which climaxed with the July 22, 2005 verdict.

Culpepper was left to face the jury all alone once the NCAA and Fulmer loopholed their way out of the case. The Tuscaloosa jurors, almost gleefully and certainly rapidly, took out years of Bama nation frustration with the NCAA on the likes of the pawn Culpepper.

Whereas Culpepper in the end faced the legal music solo, it remains to be seen if he will have to pay the piper all alone.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Culpepper, a UA grad, would have been tarred and feathered and run out of T-Town on a rail as a traitor for running his mouth to the NCAA and for bad-mouthing Cottrell, the former UA recruiting coach.

In 2005, Culpepper was merely slapped with a $30 million defamation judgment as a fabulist.

Pondering his closing arguments, Gallion contemplated comparing Culpepper to Charles Manson or to Timothy McVeigh in one last attempt to create guilt by association for the jury. Gallion did not need to refer to either "demon." All the flamboyant lawyer had to do was utter "NCAA" in the same breath as Culpepper and the jury got the message - and responded. The silver-hair, Medusa-mane attorney from Montgomery pounded home Culpepper's surreptitious association with both the NCAA and Fulmer although neither was in the courtroom or in the defendants' dock as the case reached its conclusion.

By the time this case reached crunch-time, the legal brouhaha was not about UT coach Fulmer orchestrating the Bama downfall behind the scenes, not about the NCAA using secret witnesses and other Gestapo-like tactics in its obsessive pursuit of UA, not even about the NCAA "leaking" mudslinging about Cottrell and his erstwhile co-plaintiff Ivy Williams (the other fired UA coach).

Over a two week time frame, judge Wilson - like a Las Vegas croupier manipulating a marked deck of cards - dealt Gallion and Mountain one blow after another. The brash and bombastic legal Dream Team of Cottrell had been reduced to a pair of Sisyphus-like ambulance chasers. Their once incriminating case against big-shot coach Fulmer and the Goliath-like NCAA now atomized to a few seemingly minor slander charges against the second secret witness - a nobody named Culpepper.

The huge media melange attending the trial had basically written off Cottrell's chances by Friday morning, July 22. But this was before Gallion and Mountain geared up for their "two minute offense" in closing arguments.

A struggling pair of old, mismatched mules for much of the trial, Gallion and Mountain, finally beyond the purview of judge Wilson, dashed like a pair of three-year-old thoroughbreds for the finish line and the winner's circle. Gallion and Mountain finally corralled the jury's hearts and souls. Judge Wilson's gavel finally was rendered impotent.

Garrulous Gallion dolloped out the emotional groundwork. Then the crafty, professorial Mountain wrapped it all up for the jury in a nice, tidy, legal package. The milquetoast John Scott, Culpepper's lawyer, must have felt like asphalt beneath a twin steamroller. An hour later, the jury wheeled in its a la carte decision, prompting tears of joy and stunned relief from Cottrell, his wife, and his brother.

In the end, Culpepper never had a chance with this jury. Gallion and Mountain cleverly embedded the NCAA and Fulmer in the jury's brains like negative DNA. "My dog could have won a verdict in front of this jury," noted one courtroom observer, making keen use of 20-20 hindsight.

"The only place in the state of Alabama where I would have won a jury trial is Lee County" Culpepper quipped, referring to the locale of Auburn University, his hands digging deep into his pockets trying to find two quarters to rub together to call home with the bad news.

Culpepper lost on the only three defamation counts judge Wilson allowed the jury concerning Culpepper's statements about Cottrell. Basically, the jury unanimously agreed Culpepper had, indeed, despite Culpepper's denials, transmitted these lies to other parties:

* Cottrell pocketed cash intended for the Shaun Alexander Foundation fund.

* Cottrell abandoned his wife and children in Florida when he left FSU in 1997 for the UA job.

* Cottrell stole video tapes of UA prospects from the football office at Alabama.

The resounding verdict against Culpepper was delivered along with the financial haymaker - $6 million in compensatory damages and $24 million in punitive damages.

With the dust settled, with the headlines in the bottom of the bird cage, with Paul Finebaum's caustic tongue back in front of the radio mic, and with Cottrell back in Dale County preparing Ozark Carroll for its high school home opener, many of the legal issues remain to be settled - and bills remain to be paid.

Questions left dangling include:

* The indemnity agreement between Culpepper and the NCAA: does it exist/does it cover Culpepper's legal fees for the prestigious, pricey Birmingham law firm of Starnes and Atchison? Does it cover all or part of the $30 million legal judgment against Culpepper?

* The appeals process from both the plaintiffs and the defendant, by Culpepper, and also by Williams and by Cottrell against the NCAA and challenging the spate of bombshell decisions by judge Wilson which extricated the NCAA and Fulmer from this particular legal quagmire before the jury could get to them.

* And finally, has there been any behind the scenes discussion or offer of a settlement by the NCAA to rid themselves of this gadfly Gallion? Answers will follow in the concluding chapters to this interminable soap opera."This (blickety-blank) thing is far from over," swears Gallion. "I will continue to stay on the NCAA like a tick on a hound dog!"

Stephen Flanagan Jackson is an editor/writer for The Latin American Post, Bogota, Colombia and a journalism professor at Stillman College, Tuscaloosa. Contact sfjackson10@hotmail.com.