When two University of Alabama football players, tackle Cam Robinson and safety Hootie Jones, were arrested with marijuana and two guns (one stolen) in Louisiana in mid-May, it was yet another sickening reminder there are too many thugs in college athletics. This Monday it was announced charges against both will be dropped. Marijuana and guns – yes – and lack of evidence – no? My heavens!

Said District Attorney Jerry Jones in Monroe, La., “I want to emphasize that the main reason I am doing this is that I refuse to ruin the lives of two young men who have spent their adolescence and teenager years, working and sweating, while we were at home in the air conditioning.”

Are you kidding me? It is an affront to mankind, a six-month sentence for rape, all that is rotten in Baylor University athletics. And for this old sports writer, a horrible reminder of what was once Alabama, and what it – as well as our nation – has become today.

Back in the 1960s and 70s, America changed as if never before. The hippies sprang into the sunshine of the Haight-Asbury district, we openly loathed the Viet Nam war, the Beatles sang of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and America’s young found its voice. We went to Woodstock to wallow gloriously naked in the mud, to follow The Grateful Dead with our herb-crested brownies and to smoke a strange new tobacco with “real heroes” like Jimi Hendrix with his “Purple Haze,” and Janis Joplin with her “Bobby McGee.”

The “wacky tobaccy” was suddenly everywhere and in scant time made it to Tuscaloosa, where football coach Bear Bryant marveled how today’s young had suddenly and collectively become insane. The Alabama players were different, their close-cropped hair and leather-tough hides seemingly impregnable to free love, Roman sandals, and men who flaunted their beads.

But the lure of fast and easy money somehow got inside the circle. One player, who had come off an 80-acre badland farm, was suddenly awash in cash and, far worse, became flashy, way too flashy. Bryant, who knew everything and anything about his players, suddenly stuck his nose in a very determined way into such a steaming cauldron. The very next day, as the players returned to the dorm after morning classes, all of “Moneybags” belongings – his clothes, his pillows, his girlfriend’s picture and even his mismatched socks were scattered all over the backyard of the dorm.

The kid raced to Bryant’s office, wailing that he had never smoked the stuff but was very stupid, thinking he could just deal the stuff and not get caught. Bryant had never been as mad. Not only was the player tossed off the team, he was forbidden anywhere on athletic department grounds, and if caught the Bear would personally hand him over to the sheriff where “Druggie” would spend eternity.

The kid was morose. Two days later he went to see Bryant and was told if he ever came around again he would be arrested for trespassing. Further, neither the coach nor his assistants would take the kid’s calls and his former teammates were strictly forbidden to look at him, much less talk.

At some point “Druggie” was told he’d better go to summer school, to keep up his eligibility as well as avoid the draft. He got a closet-sized apartment over a drugstore, a part-time job so he could eat, and began to pay his way through school. He also studied every night, lived at the very foot of the cross and prayed every night for a miracle.

One day about this time of the year a team manager, one of the seniors the “Old Man” could trust, stopped “Druggie” outside his 8 a.m. class and said, “I am only permitted to tell you exactly this: If you ever want to wear Crimson again this is your only chance. Be on the front steps of Coleman Coliseum at 5 a.m, Bryant time. Look your best. That’s all I can say. (Alabama players knew ‘Bryant time’ was always 15 minutes before the designated time.)

So at 4:30 “Druggie” was on the steps. He had ironed his shirt four times. His shoes were shined. His face clean-shaven, his necktie perfect. About 20 minutes before 5 the familiar blue Buick eased around the corner, Bryant stoned-faced and silent in the front while Billy, his driver and companion, was not about to say a word. They drove east on University Boulevard, towards Cottondale, and near the university golf course, took a slow turn onto Loop Road, where the VA Hospital stood.

“Druggie” could hardly breathe as Billy parked and then followed Coach into the hospital. They were met by two doctors in white coats and very little was said as they walked past a bank of elevators, down a long corridor to a much smaller elevator. One doctor pushed a button marked “BB,” which years later would be called in jail-house humor, “Below the Basement.”

The foursome then walked a dimly-lit hall to nearly its end and Bryant, standing in front of a door with a small window, finally spoke to the forlorn teenager.” “Look here,” Bryant motioned towards the window, “this is a Viet Nam veteran whose brain has been scrambled by drugs.” The player looked, recoiling at the sight of a filthy naked man sitting in his own vomit, urine and feces.

The Coach, in a life-defining moment, pointed to a nearby bucket, several towels, a bar of soap, a mop, and a bottle of Pine Sol. “What you are going to do … is clean him up, clean up his room, and help him eat breakfast,” said the Alabama coach, not saying another word as he turned to walk away with the two men in the white coats.

What you really need to know is the Viet Nam vet didn’t want to be cleaned up, but had rather fight and hurl filth and screams and cuss words instead. “Druggie,” on the other hand, knew this test was his only ticket back to Valhalla, and the next five or six hours was the hardest “Druggie” had ever scratched, wrestled, pinned down, thrown up, and repeatedly sobbed in his life.

Just about the time the Tuscaloosa sun was its hottest, “Druggie” had to walk back to his closet-sized apartment. That is where Billy, the driver, found him the next morning at 4:40 a., to say, “Your buddy needs to be cleaned up again … I’ll be down in the car.”

As the blue Buick made its way to the VA, Billy told “Druggie” three things: this was a seven-days-a-week job that started every day at 5 a.m., that behind Tutwiler dorm he’d find an old red bicycle with a busted headlight that was his to use for the summer (rain or shine), and, finally, “Don’t call us … we’ll call you.”

And so it began. June seemed awfully long but as it bled into July, the Army vet started coming around. He found his footing and soon could tend to hygiene, dress himself and talk in complete sentences. The two guys talked about what it was like to see your best friend get shot, to stop LSU at the two-yard line, the first reach of ‘acid’ getting into your blood stream, and other regular things guys talk about.

By August “Druggie” had earned enough compliments for his own breakfast tray so the two would eat, try a little Bible study and “Druggie” could take an early class. Alabama practice began about the 18th or 20th of August so not long before then, “Druggie” was walking down the dimly-lit hallway (the lights stayed on all the time) and there was a guy standing at the other end. It was an Alabama assistant coach. “Here’s a key to your dorm room. Your name is already on the list, so you can eat at the training table again, and in about a week or so somebody new will be here to take care of (patient’s first name),” he said as the prodigal son’s eyes filled with tears. “One more thing … Coach Bryant told me to tell you ‘Welcome Back.’”

“Druggie” was not just a regular in the games he played before he graduated, most of the time he was a starter. In late October, Coach Bryant was holding his weekly press conference with some players there and nodded towards “Druggie,” telling the crowd present and the public at large, “He’s a winner.” (That meant more to an Alabama player than winning the Heisman.)

* * *

I first wrote this story years ago and then, as now, I have carefully guarded and camouflaged the player’s identity. Way back then Coach Bryant promised he would never reveal it and that’s good by me. Some years later, when former Bryant assistant Mal Moore was Alabama’s athletic director, he was asked specifically about the story and would only say, “I haven’t heard of it,” which only reassured me how tightly the story was wrapped by the Alabama “family.” For the record, I don’t just think the story is true, I know it is true.

Then again, that’s the difference between never even getting charged or arrested for peddling dope and getting caught with open drugs, two pistols (one stolen) and being let loose in Louisiana because – what’s this? -- there is no air conditioning on a football field. To Nick Saban’s credit, both current Alabama players are suspended indefinitely, one now taking drug-deterrent classes while the other is being lectured on gun safety.

* * *

Former University of Tennessee football coach and now Alabama athletic director, Bill Battle, is undergoing stem-cell transplant treatment for multiple myeloma cancer at Emory. Battle, now 74, is in “good partial remission” and plans to remain as Athletic Director at The Capstone. A news release said his condition is not life threatening.

royexum@aol.com