Albert Means
| Memphis Tigers | |
|---|---|
| Position | Defensive tackle |
| Career history | |
| College | |
| High school | Trezevant |
| Personal information | |
| Place of birth | Memphis, Tennessee |
Albert Means was a high school football star and later a college football player. Means became well known because of the rule breaking that surrounded his recruitment by college programs.
Means was a standout defensive tackle at Trezevant High School in Memphis, Tennessee. As a high school senior in 1999, he was Tennessee's Mr. Football, a high school All American and was one of the most highly regarded football players in the nation. Many analysts considered Means to be the best high school defensive lineman in the United States. Several schools competed to land him as a recruit, and he ultimately signed with the University of Alabama. He appeared in seven games during the 2000 season, starting four of them.
In January 2001, former Trezevant assistant coach Milton Kirk asserted that head coach Lynn Lang had let colleges know that for $200,000 Lang would arrange for Means to play for Alabama. Kirk said that in the fall of 1999, he'd helped Lang broker a deal with several Alabama boosters in the Memphis area. During the fall, he'd gotten $30,000 from the boosters. The other $170,000 was paid when Means signed with the Crimson Tide in December.
Other claims specific to the recruitment of Means included Kirk's assertion that Lang demanded and received $6,000 in cash from a University of Kentucky booster in the presence of Kentucky assistant coach Claude Bassett for arranging Means' visit to that school, and that Lang in similar fashion received $4,000 for each visit he arranged to the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama. These allegations and other evidence provided by Tennessee Volunteers coach Phil Fulmer led the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate the recruitment of high school football players in Memphis.
The FBI investigation led to the criminal conviction on February 2, 2005 of Alabama booster Logan Young for paying $150,000 in cash to Lang through 1999 and 2000 in order to have Means play football at Alabama. Lang and Kirk also received criminal convictions for their roles in Means' recruitment.
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