"There's a lot of smoke in Memphis."
– Richard Ernsberger, Jr.

Ernsberger said that last November, when his book, "Bragging Rights: A Season Inside The SEC" was just beginning to do to that city what Mrs. O'Leary's cow did to Chicago. And he wasn't talking about Memphis' all-world barbecue.

He was referring to the incendiary stories being told about football recruiting in this town that sits on the banks of the Mississippi – stories about big talent intersecting with bigger greed and downright huge dollar figures.

It all made for great reading: eccentric boosters for Alabama and Tennessee living in Memphis, former friends and now bitter enemies; the inner-city high school coaches allegedly getting rich packaging their players to schools; the frothingly competitive Southeastern Conference programs doing what it took to get a leg up.

	“	The recruiting scene in Memphis is like the 'X-Files,' A lot of mysterious goings on, rumors, innuendo, ghosts in the closet. ”
		— Richard Ernsberger, Jr., author of "Bragging Rights"

But Ernsberger, a former baseball player at Tennessee who is now the Asia Editor for Newsweek, was viewing this project with a wide-angle lens. Memphis was just a vivid corner of the picture – a single chapter in a tome on an entire region. He did not spend his time vetting every rumor.

So the stuff came with a whiff of mythology attached – could these wild stories really be true?

"The recruiting scene in Memphis is like the 'X-Files,' " Ernsberger said back in November. "A lot of mysterious goings on, rumors, innuendo, ghosts in the closet.

"I would not be surprised if some of the rumors are true. I have many suspicions about Memphis and the recruiting activities there. ... It was not my intent to write an investigative piece on Memphis; the stuff just kind of jumps out at you. My thought was that an investigative reporter or an NCAA investigator could probably find a lot of work there."

Three tawdry months later, a battalion of investigators and investigative reporters have single-handedly boosted the Memphis tourism budget. No telling how many hotels, restaurants and rental car companies have served them. No telling how many people they've interviewed.

No telling how much truth is out there, in the wake of one of the more spectacular scandals in recent times. Or when we'll get to that truth (if ever).

The NCAA is looking into it. The Southeastern Conference is looking into it, with at least Alabama and Kentucky investigating themselves over allegations originating from Memphis. The Tennessee High School Athletic Association and Memphis city schools are looking into it. Every alphabet-soup agency with an investigator this side of the TVA is looking into it.

Most ominously of all, the FBI is poking around, as well.

The allegations, accusations and denials have flooded newspapers, talk radio and Internet message boards for weeks. The aforementioned Tennessee booster, Roy Adams, a platinum-level gossip and frequent accuser of Alabama booster Logan Young, has taken to making florid recountings on a Volunteers fan site every time he is interviewed by a reporter.

(In one of the more vivid vignettes of this saga, SEC commissioner Roy Kramer flew to Memphis at the height of the controversy for an unrelated matter, meeting the Memphis sports commission to begin preparations for the SEC women's basketball tournament to be played there this March. To Kramer's horror, the man the sports commission dispatched to pick him up at the airport was none other than Roy Adams.)

It would all be terrific theater, if it weren't for the depressing fact that much of it could well be true.

The Memphis Mess offered a selling point you just don't find in your garden-variety college recruiting scandals: an astounding alleged $200,000 price tag on the head of one player, defensive tackle Albert Means.

The 350-pound Means was nationally coveted while a senior at Trezevant High School. He wound up signing with Alabama – at the direction of his coach, Lynn Lang, according to Means and a former Trezevant assistant coach, Milton Kirk, who has been singing like a canary.

He told the 200 grand story to the Memphis Commercial Appeal in early January. Kirk alleged that he and Lang cooked up a deal to barter the unsuspecting and trusting Means to a school for $100,000 and two Ford Explorers, then upped the ante to a flat $200,000. Kirk said an offer was tendered to recruiters from five different schools.

One former Arkansas recruiter, Fitz Hill, is now the head coach at San Jose State. He told the Commercial Appeal that Lang "put (an offer) on the table," without giving details. Asked whether a number as preposterous as $200,000 surprised him, Hill said, "No, not at all."

Kirk alleges that a Crimson Tide booster ponied up the 200 large – and that it all went into Lang's pocket. That, according to a Birmingham News story this month, broke an agreement Lang had with Means' mom, Lisa, who believed she was going to get most of the money.

Lang has steadfastly denied every facet of Kirk's story – which has changed in some instances with his continued re-telling. "What he's saying is totally false," Lang told the Commercial Appeal. Young, the Alabama booster named in "Bragging Rights" and virtually every time Roy Adams spoke, also has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

Repeated attempts to reach Lang, his attorney and Young for comment were unsuccessful.

After one unhappy season at Alabama, Albert Means left school. He has subsequently transferred to the University of Memphis. The Means family is on the verge of being evicted from its home because of unpaid bills.

But even though Means is now the most famously bartered player in Memphis, his coach wasn't the first to be named in investigative reports as a recipient of collegiate cash.

That honor went to Memphis Melrose coach Tim Thompson, who had three players sign with Kentucky in February 1999. The Wildcats, previously nonfactors in Memphis recruiting, also struck the mother lode that signing period by landing Trezevant defensive tackle Dewayne Robertson, who starred last fall as a freshman.

In late December 2000, The Louisville Courier-Journal published a story alleging that fired Kentucky recruiting coordinator Claude Bassett ordered a staffer to send $1,400 in money orders to Thompson that previous October. (Thompson brought several of his players to Kentucky's home game against Mississippi State on an unofficial visit in November. Allegations that Kentucky had paid for hotel rooms and provided jackets to the players were the tip of the investigative ice berg that led to that report.)

The newspaper even printed photo copies of the money orders, made out to Thompson and bearing a signature that appeared to be Thompson's.

Bassett denied doing any such thing. Thompson's famously pithy comment at the time: "I deny anything."

But in the days that followed, Bassett's story changed. He met with Kentucky investigators for two days (with SEC commissioner Roy Kramer rather extraordinarily sitting in on the first of those). Then, a week after The Courier-Journal story ran, in one of the more bizarre episodes in SEC football, the approximately 400-pound Bassett went on live television in Lexington and admitted he did indeed send the money orders.

He offered no explanation for why he did so, and said that Thompson did not request the money.

"He was taken aback," Bassett offered.

So taken aback that the money orders were cashed at a bank near Melrose High the same day they were received.

After denying "anything," Thompson's attorney has subsequently stated that there is a logical explanation for the money orders. He is believed to have shared it privately with the Memphis city schools investigators but isn't believed to have done so with anyone else.

Repeated attempts to reach Thompson and his attorney for comments were unsuccessful.

Adding to the mess is the fact the Louisville Courier-Journal reported Wednesday as many as 16 Memphis players attended Kentucky's football camp without paying, according to the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, resulting in Melrose High School forfeiting all 13 games it won last year and paying more than $10,000 in fines and reimbursements for violating Tennessee athletic rules.

Reportedly 15 players confirmed that they did not pay to attend the camp. UK officials have said that Thompson handed a UK camp director $3,200 on the practice field to pay for the players, but nobody is sure where that $3,200 came from.

Kentucky also was a major player in the race to sign Means, and the school has investigated that recruitment, as well. Kirk at first told reporters that Kentucky's recruitment of Means was completely above-board, but he later told the Commercial Appeal that a Wildcats booster supplied Lang $6,000 on Means' official visit to the school.

Kirk also told the Memphis paper that Georgia had paid thousands to be involved with Means. Despite denials by all the Bulldogs coaches, the school has embarked on its own internal review of that allegation, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported last week.

The multi-school potential for trouble has some SEC types worried that this could mushroom into the sort of broad-based scandal that sunk the old Southwest Conference. (Remember Hart Lee Dykes, the Texas schoolboy receiver who wound up at Oklahoma State? Several schools found trouble for their recruitment of him.) That might be taking worries to an extreme, but there is plenty of reason for concern.

The fallout from it all has been fierce, but it is only beginning.

New Alabama coach Dennis Franchione, recruiting under a tremendous cloud, found himself battling "death penalty" rumors in the homes of some prospects.

Kentucky coach Hal Mumme, never implicated in any violations, resigned under heavy pressure Feb. 6.

Bassett is in line to become head football coach at Robstown High School in in Texas. Robstown principal Roel Lara said Bassett "came in and blew the committee away. He was talking about his program, who he had coached with, and in 30 minutes he had them eating out of his hand," according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. Lara also said he opposes the hiring because he doesn't think school officials have satisfactorily checked Bassett's background.

In Memphis, Lang resigned his teaching job the next day, weeks after being suspended and ultimately fired from his coaching position at Trezevant. Melrose coach Thompson and Kirk, now at Sheffield High, both remain on paid suspension.

To date Lang and Thompson have not agreed to interviews with NCAA or SEC investigators.

But if the FBI stays involved – bringing the formidable weapon of subpoena power into the fray – nobody who did wrong in Memphis figures to come out of this thing unscathed.

There's a lot of smoke in Memphis, all right. Fire, too. And in the end, a good chunk of an entire conference could get charred.

Pat Forde covers college football for the Louisville Courier-Journal.