TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- "C'mere," Alabama coach Mike Price said, standing behind his desk. "Let me show you something."

He steps toward a door behind him, then stops. "Isn't this office something?" he asked.

The office is big enough for a first down, or at least big enough to call for a measurement. "I was here two or three days," Price said, "and I'm out in the hallway, asking someone where the men's room is. They said, 'Coach, you have a bathroom.' I didn't know what was behind this door."

Price opens the door, which leads to a small hallway. He gives a tour of the full bath on the left and the kitchenette on the right. At the other end is a door that leads to the coaches' meeting room.

	Mike Price is bringing his West Coast offense to Alabama.

"I've never been at a place where I had everything," Price said.

CBS is searching for a poor Appalachian family to move to California in a reality version of the Beverly Hillbillies. The network ought to call off the search and send its cameras to Tuscaloosa. Price, 56, a coaching lifer at Have-Nots such as Weber State and Washington State, turned the bubblin' crude of last season's Pacific-10 Conference championship, his second in the last six seasons, into life at a Have.

The decision surprised everyone on both ends of the transaction. When he called his son Eric, 36, then an assistant coach with the New York Jets, last December to tell him that Alabama had shown an interest in the old man, Eric's voice exploded. "Alabama!" he said. Just to make sure, Eric asked, "Bear Bryant Alabama?"

A self-described "football guy" who had coached only three seasons east of the Rockies in his 33-year career, and who had spent the last 14 seasons at Washington State, is sitting in Bryant's former office, raving about the 70-degree weather in the last full week of winter and displaying his newfound appreciation of southern culture. He is crooning a lament about his introduction to, and infatuation with, the local cuisine.

"I've been to Dreamland," Price said, referring to the legendary barbecue joint on the edge of town. "The humidity has shrunk my pants up."

The mock complaint is his only one.

"This is a football state," Price said. "If I was a hockey coach, I should go to Wisconsin. It's kind of an honor to be here."

Life as a Have includes digital video with 24 editing stations (Washington State had three editing stations), an 85,000-seat stadium (the Cougars seated 35,000), and tradition. On the wall across from the desk of his secretary, Mary Spybey, is a framed photo of six national championship rings.

There's also life as a Had Too Much. NCAA probation will keep Alabama out of a bowl for a second consecutive season. He has no privacy, no roots, and lots of demands on time. The first time his Alabama team falters -- and given the loss of 21 scholarships over three years, as well as the coaching transition, the margin of error is tight -- a career that needed last fall's 10-3 record to go over. 500 (129-122, .514) will be brought up.

In meeting with Crimson Tide alumni and fans across the South, Price said their response has been, "We need to support this guy and give him time to make it happen. I sense that," Price said. " I've also sensed that we've got to beat Auburn."

Several times over the course of a 45-minute conversation, he said that he planned to end his career here, which is ironic, given that no one ever thought he would leave Washington State.

"I figured he would stay there forever," Eric Price said. "He's a true blue Cougar, through and through. He just got to the point in his career where he got that program built up to where he wanted it to be. He's not getting any younger. He wants this. He is ready for a new challenge."

Eric is standing on the practice field nearest the football building after the team's fifth workout. He abandoned his career plan as an NFL assistant to be his father's offensive coordinator and receivers coach. His brother Aaron, 32, one of four Washington State assistants to come south, is the quarterbacks coach.

"Unbelievable," Eric said. "If you had told me a year ago that I would be coaching at Alabama...."

Mike Price is introducing Alabama's fans to his West Coast offense on the field and his western personality off of it. Price is friendly and guileless, two traits that his predecessors in the job were loathe to show. The football coach at Alabama is high priest to half the state.

"I am pretty well known in the state of Washington," Price said. " I couldn't really go anywhere. But I don't know if people gave a damn about me in the state of Washington the way they do in Alabama. I was certainly well known. It didn't have that real star quality that it has here. I was 'Old Coach Price from the college.' Here, once you start with the autographs, they never stop. Next year, it will be worse, when everybody really knows what I look like."

	“	I know we're on the honeymoon.They want somebody to want them and they got somebody who wants them, somebody who gave up a lot to want them. I didn't come all the way across the country and bring both my (sons) and their wives and kids to not give my very best effort. We're not coming here to vacation, or to retire. We're coming here to win as many games as we possibly can. ”
		— 'Bama coach Mike Price

He is also sure of himself and what he believes in, another trait imported from the West. While his search for a defensive coordinator drew more attention than he had ever received, Price didn't react to the scrutiny. He took nearly six weeks before hiring Florida State linebacker coach Joe Kines, a well-respected, veteran assistant who had been defensive coordinator under Ray Perkins at Alabama in 1985-86.

"The fans were anxious," Price said. "They were kind of panicky. 'We can't get a good guy.' Ended up we couldn't get a better guy."

Price's comfort in his own skin means the Alabama fans, a group that takes themselves as seriously as United Nations diplomats, will take their cue from a guy who regularly gasses up at the blarney station.

"I joke around with people a lot more than they are used to," he said. "I'm still going to do it my way." Take the story that Price tells on the fund-raising circuit about his new home. He and his wife Joyce bought it from a resident whose career forced him to leave town suddenly. The owner's name was Dennis Franchione.

"I bought a haunted house," Price says. "But we moved in. We fixed the broken windows, and we got rid of the gasoline cans in the front yard. We fixed the part that they tried to burn. Fran gave me a good deal because nobody else in the state of Alabama would have bought it."

Few coaches would do anything other than utter perfunctory praise to their predecessor, which Price did as well. "These players are tough and they are disciplined, so that's good," Price said. "I'm taking over a good football team. ... Fran did a good job but he left and they didn't like it. It's not like he's Mr. Popularity."

Price and Franchione may be as different as two personalities can be. Those difference extend between the sidelines. Franchione's teams physically dominate. Price likes to throw the ball, which emphasizes quickness before power. One of the early surprises of spring ball has been senior wide receiver Zach Fletcher, who is delighted to have given up the blocking recitals he performed on play after play last year, when he caught only seven passes for 193 yards and two touchdowns.

During practice on March 12, Fletcher made cornerback Roberto McBride bite on an inside cut, then turned upfield. As McBride yelled, "Ooooohhh!," Fletcher sprinted past him and collected quarterback Brodie Croyle's pass downfield.

"I tried to warn you," wideout A.C. Carter said to McBride as their teammates whooped in delight. "I tried to warn you."

There is more whooping on the practice field than the Tide did last season. Price is the rare coach who appears to care whether his players are having fun. Several years ago, when Washington State prepared to play USC, Price had someone dress up as Tommy Trojan and ride onto the practice field on a white horse. Price pulled out a cap gun and took off in pursuit, firing away.

To this day, at the end of most practices, he holds a drill designed for the players' enjoyment. They may all kick field goals, or throw passes. Anyone in uniform may participate, usually to the catcalls of his teammates.

"It's a lot more fun," Fletcher said. "It makes everything better. Coach Fran took the game out of it. He took the fun out of it for everybody. I'm not talking bad about him. He's a good coach. His coaches would yell at everything we did wrong. These guys correct you and move on to the next play without putting you down."

The transition process is just beginning. Price is proud of mastering Southern grammar. "'Y'all' is one person. 'You all' is everybody," he said. He is old enough to have gotten goose bumps during recruiting season when he drove across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, site of the famous 1965 civil rights march. He can't get over how nice everyone has been, even as he understands the fragile nature of the Crimson Tide psyche after the last few years of turmoil.

"I know we're on the honeymoon," Price said. "They want somebody to want them and they got somebody who wants them, somebody who gave up a lot to want them. I didn't come all the way across the country and bring both my (sons) and their wives and kids to not give my very best effort. We're not coming here to vacation, or to retire. We're coming here to win as many games as we possibly can."

When Price talks about Alabama, he sounds as if he is living as much in the past as his biggest fans. He did not come to the Alabama that has so many problems, Dennis Franchione fled to Texas A&M for relief. He came to the Alabama of Bear Bryant, who died 20 years ago last January.

"I always wanted to coach in that stadium," Price said, pointing down Paul W. Bryant Drive at Bryant-Denny Stadium. "I wanted to be here. To finish my career at Alabama and be successful here would be the cap on the Capstone."

He paused. "That's what they call it around here," Price said.

The Alabamization of Mike Price continues.

Ivan Maisel is a senior writer at ESPN.com. He can be reached at ivan.maisel@espn3.com.