The news about Alabama’s director of football operations continues to worsen. Joe Pannunzio was fired “because of numerous incidents that occurred (at Murray State) under him that were quite bad,” according to the former president of Murray State.

President F. King Alexander told the Long Beach Press-Telegram about his dealings with Joe Pannunzio. (H/T Bryan D. Fischer and Jon Solomon.)

“You must understand that in 2005 when I was president at Murray State, I fired our football coach, Joe Pannunzio, because of numerous incidents that occurred in our program under him that were quite bad,” he said. “Well, Pannunzio immediately was hired by Miami, and he’s one of the coaches who’s been prominently mentioned by Shapiro in the current scandal. He’s now the head of football operations at Alabama.”

Alexander is now president at Long Beach State, and took the opportunity to point out the hypocrisy of someone like Miami’s Paul Dee chastising other schools while his own Miami Hurricane program was involved in serious wrongdoing.

However, the reference to Alabama is the most important for Crimson Tide football fans. The latest revelation is a blow to Pannunzio’s standing at Alabama.

Alabama football coach Nick Saban spoke about the Miami situation at his Thursday evening press conference.

“I know what goes on in this program, and I know we do things correctly,” Saban said. “We do have people in this organization who worked (at Miami). Before those people were ever hired here, we do an NCAA check to make sure they pass all compliance criteria and don’t have any red flags relative to compliance history. We certainly did that in both of these cases.”

You can read more of what Alabama football coach Nick Saban said about offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland and director of football operations Joe Pannunzio by clicking here.

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