Another MCA Article

Posted by never die easy on June 09, 2005 at 20:24:17:
Calkins: The closer you look, the dirtier it becomesBy Geoff CalkinsContactJune 9, 2005
Why would Lynn Lang lie?
Ask yourself this, as you weigh his story today.
Why would he lie about Arkansas offering him a job as defensive line coach and $80,000 in cash?
Why would he lie about former Georgia coach Jim Donnan bidding until the very end?
Why would he lie about Ole Miss trying to get in the auction, and Tennessee assistant Pat Washington throwing out the number $50,000?
Lang lives in Flint, Mich. He's unemployed. He has nothing at stake anymore.
He's already pleaded guilty and been sentenced for the sale of Albert Means.
So why would he lie?
"I'll stick my arm out and take a lie detector test," he said.
"Who else wants to do that? But I'll stick my arm out on anything I told you because I ain't afraid of the truth."
• •
Logan Young will be sentenced today in federal court. The government is believed to be asking for at least two years in prison.
It's difficult to imagine Young won't have to serve some time. He was found guilty of giving Lang $150,000 to deliver Means to Alabama.
That's bribery of a public official. Need to send a message, and all that.
But does anyone really believe this begins and ends with Young and Lang?
Does anyone believe Young invented buying players or Lang invented selling them?
"They came to me," Lang said, on the telephone from Flint. "Why am I going to go up and ask you for $100,000 for a football player? Where would I get the idea to do that?
"I never had a big-time player before Albert Means. And I'm just going to decide out of the blue to ask for that kind of money?"
Lang spoke in long bursts, relieved, even thrilled, to unburden himself.
People thought he didn't give money to Means. He said he gave the Means family roughly $60,000.
"If I didn't give them money, wouldn't Ms. Means have said something bad about me?" he said. "But she didn't. You check the record. Why do you think that is?"
Means wouldn't comment on Lang's allegation that he got cash. When Gary Parrish of this paper asked Means about Lang's story, he said, "Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?"
Glad we cleared that up.
But there's an irresistible logic to Lang's narrative, and a compelling level of detail.
He told about meeting Fitz Hill, the Arkansas assistant. He said Hill offered to leave him "$80,000 under a bridge."
He said Tennessee assistant Pat Washington didn't flinch at paying big money so long as the price didn't continue to go up because "that's what they did at Melrose."
He said he got ticked when Ole Miss assistant Kurt Roper kept trying to call Means's mother directly. He said he cut Roper off.
So who showed up at a Trezevant football game?
A hostess Means met during a visit to Ole Miss.
"Man, why are you throwing that girl up in our face?" Lang said he told Roper. "Why you sending that girl to me?"
"If you're not going to let me talk to the boy," Roper said, according to Lang, "then I gotta do something."
Roper denied doing anything untoward in the recruitment of Means. Of course he did.
But does this sound like a scene Lang conjured out of thin air? How about Lang's meeting with Georgia booster Bill Harper?
According to Lang, he was taken to Applebee's by Georgia assistant Leon Perry.
"All of a sudden, there's someone sitting at the table," Lang said. "I don't know who this fellow is. It's Bill Harper.
"Then Perry gets up and goes to the bathroom and we talk money. When he comes back, the talk about money stops.
"Now you tell me. Why would someone from my background go to Applebee's with Bill Harper? Use your common sense."
Lang is under no illusions that his latest revelations will cause the NCAA to take action against any of the schools, by the way.
NCAA investigators already looked into all this. Alabama and Kentucky are the only schools that got whacked.
But if the other coaches were so appalled Lang asked them for cash, why didn't they report him for recruiting violations at the time?
If Lang is an incorrigible liar, why wasn't that exposed at Young's trial?
Lang stood up to the cross-examination of Jim Neal, one of the more celebrated lawyers of our time.
"And the jury believed me," Lang said. "You think I could rehearse all this?"
Alas, no. Lang couldn't rehearse this, couldn't invent it, couldn't imagine a world as seedy as the one we have.
That's the lesson of today, boys and girls. However dirty you might think college sports might be, it's dirtier still.
It's not one rogue booster buying one rogue coach.
"Everyone else already knew how to do it," Lang said. "I walked into something that was already formed,"
So, yes, Young may be sentenced to jail today. And people may read Lang's tale. And then the college coaches, administrators and high school coaches who still profit off college football will say none of it's true.
It's crazy, they'll say. Lang can't prove any of it.
To that, once again, ask yourself:
Why would he lie?
To reach Geoff Calkins, call him