LarryD
05-07-03, 12:30 PM
SI report details Price's day, night in Pensacola
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ESPN.com news services
When the firing of Mike Price as Alabama football coach was announced Saturday, his failure to live his "personal and professional life in a manner consistent with university policies" was cited as a reason for his dismissal.
Price's deportment included two trips to a strip club and a hotel-room liaison with two women during a golf outing to Pensacola, Fla., according to a Sports Illustrated account of the eventful day and night that led directly to his firing.
Written from eyewitness interviews, an article in SI, on newsstands today, provides specific details of Price's behavior at Arety's Angels, a Pensacola strip club, on April 12. The article also includes eyewitness details of Price's behavior in his hotel room that night.
According to the magazine, Price went to the Pensacola club both before and after the sponsor's dinner for the Emerald Coast Classic Pro-Am, a stop on the PGA Champions tour. Price was entered in the celebrity pro-am.
Witnesses told SI that Price was extremely agressive with the women who worked at the club during both visits.
"I offered him a table dance," Lori (Destiny) Boudreaux, a married mother of two who has worked in strip clubs for 15 years, told SI. "He tipped me $60. Then he asked me to take him to the semi-private dance area. He got a little bad there. We have rules, and touching is not allowed.
"He told me I was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen," Boudreaux continued. "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."
Price attended the sponsor's dinner, and then rushed back to the club, witnesses told SI. Price was apparently not shy about interacting with the employees or spending money. During that second visit, according to two witnesses, Price was sitting at the bar kissing and fondling a waitress until a deejay reminded him he had to stop.
"All told he probably spent a couple hundred dollars on drinks and a little more than that on dances," club owner Arety Kapetanis told SI. "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."
According to SI, Price left the club at midnight and went back to his hotel. According to one of the women involved, Price engaged "in some pretty aggressive sex" with two women in the hotel. The source told SI that at one point she and her female companion "started screaming 'Roll Tide!' and he was yelling back, 'It's rolling, baby, it's rolling.'"
The woman declined to tell SI, when asked, if she was paid for the evening.
When contacted by SI, Price said he visited Arety's only once on the 12th -- after the dinner -- and denied having sex with two women in his hotel room.
While Price was on the golf course the following morning, tournament director Phil Garcia told him there was a problem back at the hotel, according to SI. Sources told the magazine that 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. The woman was not allowed to leave, so Price returned to the hotel to settle the tab.
At Saturday's news conference, Alabama president Robert Witt disclosed for the first time that Price was warned before that trip about his public behavior.
An Alabama student detailed an incident to SI that led to one of the warnings.
"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," the student told SI. "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."
Price led Washington State to consecutive 10-win seasons and a Rose Bowl berth last season. He was to have been Alabama's sixth head coach since Bear Bryant retired after the 1982 season.
Price agreed to a seven-year contract worth $10 million with Alabama but never signed it. The deal had a clause saying he could be fired for any behavior "that brings (the) employee into public disrepute, contempt, scandal, or ridicule or that reflects unfavorably upon the reputation or the high moral or ethical standards of the University."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ESPN.com news services
When the firing of Mike Price as Alabama football coach was announced Saturday, his failure to live his "personal and professional life in a manner consistent with university policies" was cited as a reason for his dismissal.
Price's deportment included two trips to a strip club and a hotel-room liaison with two women during a golf outing to Pensacola, Fla., according to a Sports Illustrated account of the eventful day and night that led directly to his firing.
Written from eyewitness interviews, an article in SI, on newsstands today, provides specific details of Price's behavior at Arety's Angels, a Pensacola strip club, on April 12. The article also includes eyewitness details of Price's behavior in his hotel room that night.
According to the magazine, Price went to the Pensacola club both before and after the sponsor's dinner for the Emerald Coast Classic Pro-Am, a stop on the PGA Champions tour. Price was entered in the celebrity pro-am.
Witnesses told SI that Price was extremely agressive with the women who worked at the club during both visits.
"I offered him a table dance," Lori (Destiny) Boudreaux, a married mother of two who has worked in strip clubs for 15 years, told SI. "He tipped me $60. Then he asked me to take him to the semi-private dance area. He got a little bad there. We have rules, and touching is not allowed.
"He told me I was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen," Boudreaux continued. "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."
Price attended the sponsor's dinner, and then rushed back to the club, witnesses told SI. Price was apparently not shy about interacting with the employees or spending money. During that second visit, according to two witnesses, Price was sitting at the bar kissing and fondling a waitress until a deejay reminded him he had to stop.
"All told he probably spent a couple hundred dollars on drinks and a little more than that on dances," club owner Arety Kapetanis told SI. "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."
According to SI, Price left the club at midnight and went back to his hotel. According to one of the women involved, Price engaged "in some pretty aggressive sex" with two women in the hotel. The source told SI that at one point she and her female companion "started screaming 'Roll Tide!' and he was yelling back, 'It's rolling, baby, it's rolling.'"
The woman declined to tell SI, when asked, if she was paid for the evening.
When contacted by SI, Price said he visited Arety's only once on the 12th -- after the dinner -- and denied having sex with two women in his hotel room.
While Price was on the golf course the following morning, tournament director Phil Garcia told him there was a problem back at the hotel, according to SI. Sources told the magazine that 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. The woman was not allowed to leave, so Price returned to the hotel to settle the tab.
At Saturday's news conference, Alabama president Robert Witt disclosed for the first time that Price was warned before that trip about his public behavior.
An Alabama student detailed an incident to SI that led to one of the warnings.
"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," the student told SI. "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."
Price led Washington State to consecutive 10-win seasons and a Rose Bowl berth last season. He was to have been Alabama's sixth head coach since Bear Bryant retired after the 1982 season.
Price agreed to a seven-year contract worth $10 million with Alabama but never signed it. The deal had a clause saying he could be fired for any behavior "that brings (the) employee into public disrepute, contempt, scandal, or ridicule or that reflects unfavorably upon the reputation or the high moral or ethical standards of the University."