20 years ago today - "Bama Fires Price"

How the hell has it been 20 years?

That Washington State offense wasn't going to work.

I think he would have success. Just inconsistent. Much like he was at Wazzu. But he never would have lasted that long at Alabama, with every season being a roller coaster.

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I think he would have success. Just inconsistent. Much like he was at Wazzu. But he never would have lasted that long at Alabama, with every season being a roller coaster.

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Well, we certainly got that with his replacement.

Hard to believe it has been 20 years. I was living in B'ham at the time. I was going to McAllistee's for lunch on US 280 @ Hwy 119.

It's rolling baby, it's rolling!!!!!!

My neighbor was a walk on Bama player and I told him Franchoni was leaving for A&M and he didn't believe me. I forget what the name of the old LSU forum was then but was very accurate in info. Fran leaves for College Station and Bama hires Price for more offense. Crazy times.

Saban was at LSU about to win our first Natty is some time.

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Those reports alleged the woman ordered one of every item on the menu and asked that it be placed in boxes so she could take them with her.

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what was she gonna do share it with her family and friends?

I don't know how much of the rumors were true versus embellished but it still fricking hilarious. You have to be completely out of control to think any of this was something you could get away with.

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On April 23 an Auburn fan with the screen name EagleKlaw visited autigers.com, a website for Tigers boosters, and posted a message that may well have marked the beginning of the end of Mike Price's brief tenure as football coach at bitter rival Alabama:

"Someone told me the night before the [Emerald Coast Classic Pro-Am] that Mike Price had lost his Visa card and was in a panic because of who he was with when he lost it. Has anyone else heard about this?"

Another fan, TigerRat, replied the next morning: "I
hear it was a couple of working girls."

The subject of Price's behavior while in Pensacola., Fla., for the golf tournament soon became the talk of sports radio shows throughout the Southeast. It was reported that Price had in fact been in a strip club for several hours, spending hundreds of dollars on drinks, private dances and tips for the dancers, and that the next morning an unidentified woman had charged nearly $1,000 of hotel room service on the coach's credit card.

Last Saturday, following a meeting of the university's board of trustees, Price, a surprise hire last December when he was given a seven-year, $10 million contract to leave Washington State, was fired before ever coaching a game for the Crimson Tide.

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On April 16, Price flew from Tuscaloosa to Pensacola aboard the jet of Alabama businessman James Lee III, en route to the Emerald Coast Classic, a stop on the PGA Champions tour that was to be played that weekend. Price was part of the field for the celebrity pro-am.

The 57-year-old coach had barely hit the ground in Pensacola that afternoon when he headed to Arety's Angels, one of the city's six strip clubs, settled at a table not far from the main stage and started buying drinks for dancers, according to two witnesses
interviewed last week by SI. "He introduced himself as Mike," said waitress Amanda York. "But I love Alabama football, and I knew who he was. So later I leaned down and called him 'Coach.' He just held his finger to his lips as if to say, 'Don't tell.'"

According to the two witnesses, Price spent most of his time that afternoon buying dances from and drinks for Lori (Destiny) Boudreaux, a 36-year-old married mother of two who has worked in strip clubs for 15 years. "He offered to buy me a drink and asked me to sit with him," Boudreaux told SI. "I offered him a table dance. He tipped me $60. Then he asked me to take him to the
semiprivate dance area. He got a little bad there. We have rules, and touching is not allowed."

Boudreaux said Price told her that he was married and had kids but never mentioned what he did for a living. "He told me I was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen," Boudreaux said. "He kept telling me he had a room at the [Crowne Plaza] Hotel, and he wanted me to meet him there late that night. He was definitely persistent. I told him my husband was coming to pick me up after work, which he did, by the way. "

After about two hours at the club, Price headed to the golf tournament's sponsors' dinner. "On his way out, he told me to remember his offer and to meet him at the hotel," Boudreaux told SI. "In 15 years I've had thousands of men ask me to meet them after work. He was asking in ways that told me he'd done this before." At dinner Price "shook hands and worked the room pretty
well," according to a coach in attendance. "He gave no indication that he had been out on the town already, and when several of us looked for him after dinner to go out, he was already gone."


Apparently Price made a beeline back to the club, which prides itself, said owner Arety Kapetanis, on being "a bar so friendly, it should be known as Cheers with tits." And this time everybody knew Price's name.

"He wasn't here long when a buddy of mine, who was here with his wife celebrating their anniversary, came over and said, 'Do you know who that is?'" said club manager Gary Hodge. "These folks were [University of Florida] Gators and huge football fans, so they knew it was the new Alabama coach. I welcomed [Price] to the
club." Before long, Hodge said, Price was buying the couple a congratulatory drink, and several people around him started calling Price "Coach."

Later, according to two witnesses, Price was sitting at the bar kissing and fondling a waitress until a reminder from the deejay prompted him to stop. Then Price moved to a table where he purchased $30 drinks for several dancers. "All told he probably spent a couple hundred dollars on drinks and a little more than that on dances," Kapetanis said. "Then there were the tips, and
I'm told he tipped well. We're used to local celebrities coming around, but not someone quite like him."

At about midnight Price headed back to the hotel. He eventually met up with two women, both of whom he had earlier propositioned for sex, according to one of the women, who agreed to speak to SI about the hotel-room liaison on the condition that her name not
be used. The woman, who declined comment when asked if she was paid for the evening, said that the threesome engaged "in some pretty aggressive sex." She said that at one point she and her female companion decided to add a little levity to the activity:

"We started screaming 'Roll Tide!' and he was yelling back, 'It's rolling, baby, it's rolling.'" (Reached on his cellphone on Sunday, Price said that he visited Arety's only once on April 16--after the sponsors' dinner--and denied having sex with two
women in his hotel room or even inviting anyone to the room.)


The next morning, according to the woman interviewed by SI, she got up early and left the hotel before Price departed for his eight o'clock tee time. On the course he seemed neither worried nor distracted, playing partner Larry Wilkin, a Tuscaloosa businessman, told reporters last week. Wilkin said Price received a couple of calls on his cellphone while on the course, including
one from his wife, Joyce. But after Price's round was complete, tournament director Phil Garcia alerted him to a problem back at the hotel. Sources said Garcia told Price that a woman in his room had ordered early $1,000 worth of food from room service--"At least one of everything on the menu, all in to-go boxes," one hotel employee told SI--and that the hotel had refused to let her leave with the food because it was Price's credit card that was to be charged. Price left the course shortly thereafter, went back to the hotel and settled the tab.

According to a source close to the athletic department, Price had already been chastised twice by athletic director Mal Moore for spending time buying drinks for students and "generally serving as the life of the party in too many bars."

In fact, two Alabama students spoke to SI on Monday about an incident that apparently led to one of Moore's conversations with Price. According to one of the students, a few weeks after Price was hired, the coach went to Buffalo's American Grille near campus and, after four hours of drinking, propositioned some female students. "I heard him tell several girls who he was
buying drinks for that his wife was still back in Washington and he wanted them to come to his room at the GameDay Condos," one of the student sources said. "One of the girls lives at GameDay, and when we went by there at 2:30 a.m., he was stumbling around and told us he had forgotten the entry code [he needed] to get up in
the elevator. One girl offered to help, and he tried to talk her into coming to his condo. Everyone was kind of shocked."

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So Price was hired in Dec 2002 but never signed a contract?

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So Price was hired in Dec 2002 but never signed a contract?

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Only a lot of Mastercard & American Express receipts