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.

"He was a nice enough guy, but he never really fit in," one

Alabama booster who asked to remain anonymous said of Price, a

Colorado native who had spent all but three years of his coaching

career west of the Rockies. "Coming from where he came from, I

don't think he could really grasp what a spotlight he was in.

This is a different world down here when it comes to our

football. You really need a little good ol' boy, a hair of

redneck and a lot of back-slapping in you. Everyone in the state

is a critic, and everywhere you go, people are watching. He never

got that this ain't the Pac-10."

From numerous interviews with people who spent time with or saw

Price in Pensacola, SI has pieced together the following account

of the events that ultimately led to his dismissal: 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 nearly $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.

By the time the SEC rumor mill began to grind, Price's hopes of

becoming "the second greatest coach in Alabama history," as he

put it at the time of his hiring, were starting to fade.

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." Neither

Price nor Moore could be reached for comment on Monday.

As the story of Price's night in Pensacola became big news in

Alabama, university president Robert Witt, just three months on

the job, left Price twisting in the wind. The coach acknowledged

"mistakes" but appeared confident that he wouldn't lose his job.

Witt decided otherwise. In announcing Price's dismissal last

Saturday, he said that the coach had failed to live his "personal

and professional life in a manner consistent with university

policies."

It was the latest setback for a storied program that has won

seven national titles but has been in turmoil since the

mid-1990s. The Tide is on NCAA probation and ineligible for a

bowl game next season because of rules violations under coach

Mike DuBose, who was forced out in 2000 during a 3-8 season in

which he admitted to having lied about an affair with his

secretary. Dennis Franchione bailed out after last season to take

the job at Texas A&M. Price's successor--former Crimson Tide

quarterback Mike Shula, a Miami Dolphins assistant, was the

leading candidate as of Monday--will be Alabama's fourth coach in

four years.

After his fate had been sealed on Saturday, Price told reporters

that while he was sorry, he didn't deserve dismissal. "I don't

think the punishment meets the crime," said the coach, whose sons

Eric, 36, and Aaron, 32, are expected to step down as Crimson

Tide assistants. "I think President Witt is making a mistake.

He's not breaking the law, but he's making an error in judgment."

As details of Price's exploits became public last week, many were

saying the same thing about him. "I guess what's most surprising

is that with so many people seeing him at the strip club and so

many rivals sitting at the golf tournament when they told him a

girl was in his room ordering steaks, you've got to wonder how it

was kept quiet even this long," one longtime Alabama high school

coach said. "I don't think Mike Price ever fully understood that

when you're football coach at Alabama, you're the most

significant figure in the state. You're more well-known than the

governor."

Kapetanis, owner of the strip club, didn't initially grasp that

either. "Two weeks ago I had never heard of Mike Price, and I

can't say I had ever seen an Alabama football game," she said.

"Now I've got 15 television trucks parked outside with reporters

doing live shots. I guess at least two people figured out this

week how big Alabama football is. Mike Price and me."

COLOR PHOTO: JASON GETZ/TUSCALOOSA NEWS/AP (PRICE) THE TIDE TURNS Price's downfall began on April 16 at Arety's Angels, a Pensacola strip club where he met Boudreaux (above).

COLOR PHOTO: THE BIRMINGHAM NEWS [See caption above]

COLOR PHOTO: GARY BOGDON (BOUDREAUX) [See caption above]

COLOR PHOTO

COLOR PHOTO: GARY BOGDON BIG MAN OFF CAMPUS "We're used to local celebrities coming around," said Kapetanis (above, rear), "but not someone like [Price]."

COLOR PHOTO: GARY BOGDON

COLOR PHOTO: GARY BOGDON HUSHED York says that when she called Price "Coach" in the strip club, "he held his finger to his lips as if to say, 'Don't tell.'"

COLOR PHOTO: CHRISTINE PRICHARD/BIRMINGHAM POST-HERALD/AP PAYING THE PRICE "I don't think the punishment meets the crime," the coach said.

Boudreaux says Price "wanted me to meet him late that night. He

was definitely persistent."