CECIL HURT: Lang claims fuel questions of 'what if?’
June 12, 2005
How would a jury have reacted if it knew Albert Means was not a victim?
That’s the question of the week in the long-running soap opera that began with the University of Alabama’s NCAA case and proceeded into courtrooms across the Southeast, and where it continues, in various venues, to this day. A Memphis Commercial Appeal article has prompted the question. In that article in which Lynn Lang, Means’ former high school coach, claims he provided Means with some $60,000 during Means’ final two years of high school.
The defense team for Logan Young, who was found guilty of giving Lang that money so that Means would sign with Alabama is, understandably, aghast. They argue, plausibly, that a jury might have seen things differently, or, at the very least, that Young’s culpability (and hence any possible jail sentence) is greatly mitigated by the fact that Albert Means was no victim.
Along the way, Lang also portrayed the recruitment of Means as a freewheeling circus in which a lot of teams participated, not a corrupt transaction in which there was only one culprit. Lang provided the names of a lot of schools -- including Tennessee and Arkansas, to name the most hypocritical and moralistic of the alleged bidders -- along with dollar amounts and a few local color details, like the one where an Arkansas coach promised to leave $80,000 in a bag under a bridge.
It has even prompted a few regional columnists to propose that maybe Means wasn’t a victim (gasp!), or that the NCAA prosecution of the case was, at best, rather selective (double gasp!). Honesty has to get the best of modesty here, if only to the extent of saying that regular readers of this column have heard all those points many times before.
That doesn’t diminish the importance of this week’s revelations for Young, who is fighting to stay out of jail. Furthermore, whenever another person steps back and takes a fresh look at how the NCAA functions, that’s a victory. That’s a big reason why The Tuscaloosa News is fighting to unseal and reveal all the documents in the Ronnie Cottrell/Ivy Williams lawsuit. Every piece of information contributes to the public’s understanding of this incredibly complex and still-evolving case.
Quite likely, a redefinition of Means’ “victim" status would have influenced a Memphis jury in Young’s case, a case that never belonged in a federal courtroom in the first place. But that leads to another question.
How would this information have affected that “other" jury -- the NCAA Committee on Infractions?
There are so many subtexts to Alabama’s NCAA Infractions hearing. There were so many agendas at work, some of them known at the time, others that have subsequently come to light, and yet others that will be exposed in the future. I’ve yet to see any summary, including the one that Cottrell’s attorneys filed this week, that encompasses everything that happened.
I am convinced, though, that Albert Means as “victim" was one of the motivating factors -- not the only one, by any means, but a big one -- in the COI’s ultimate decision. For one thing, it explains one of the more inexplicable elements of the whole case: the viper’s-venom rhetoric directed by committee chairman Thomas Yeager towards an institution that had been co-operative beyond the point of self-preservation.
Perhaps we are in the tricky territory of the sub-conscious here. Probably, every member of the COI would deny that the unique history of the University of Alabama played a role in its decision-making.
But I do know that the NCAA prides itself on a politically “aware" agenda, positioning itself against everything from Confederate flags to Indian nicknames. I do know that Southern schools are penalized far more frequently -- and more severely -- than Eastern and Midwestern schools. And I sincerely believe that when Alabama sat in the NCAA’s peculiar dock of justice, there were ghosts sitting there as well, ghosts that once stood in the schoolhouse door. They aren’t literal specters, of course. But that image still lives, and the perception of rich, old boosters exploiting a young black man -- which is exactly how the story was presented to the COI -- made it resonate.
Would a jury have responded differently if it knew the case (such as it was) was business as usual in a lot of places, not just in the South, but in places like Michigan and Ohio as well? It’s hard to detect much moral difference in Albert Means getting paid off and Chris Webber getting paid off. And when the moral element is stripped away, would the wrath of any jury, even one as agenda-ridden as the Committee on Infractions, be quite the same?
This was no crusade. There seem to have been no real victims and far more perpetrators than the NCAA was willing to prosecute. And as this case as proceeded through its long after-life, that has gotten clearer and clearer with every fact that has come to light.
Cecil Hurt is sports editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Reach him at cecil.hurt@tuscaloosanews.com or at (205) 722-0225.
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Bama is looking sooooo goooood in all this whiny, jilted coach, "we wuz wronged" litigation, both criminal and civil. 
Even if they "win", Bama still loses. 
