Sports Illustrated brings prurient detail to Price story

TUSCALOOSA | The well-documented escapades of former Alabama football coach Mike Price have graduated from newspapers across the Southeast to the most popular sports magazine in the country.

Sports Illustrated is publishing a story that hits newsstands today which paints Price's infamous night in Pensacola in an alarmingly seamy context.

The story runs in side-by-side with a story detailing the downfall of former Iowa State basketball coach Larry Eustachy. It is titled "Bad Behavior: How [Mike Price] Met His Destiny at a Strip Club".

It details the night of April 16, when Price flew to Pensacola aboard the jet of Alabama businessman James Lee III.

According to SI, Price almost immediately headed to Arety's Angels strip club, where he spent most of his time buying dances from and drinks for Lori "Destiny" Boudreaux, a 36-year-old mother of two who has worked in strip clubs for 15 years.

"I offered him a table dance. He tipped be $60," Boudreaux told SI. "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. 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."

The story continues with Price heading to the sponsors' dinner for the Emerald Coast Classic pro-am event, and later returning to Arety's Angels to spend what Boudreaux described as "a couple hundred dollars on drinks and a little more than that on dances" and tips.

SI then says that Price, 57, headed back to the hotel at around midnight, and eventually met up with two women.

Longtime Price friend Mac Bledsoe, in an interview with The Paul Finebaum Show on Friday, said that Price "wound up with a lady in his room the next morning, and he had no recollection of it."

The SI story continues with Price making his 8 a.m. tee time for the April 17 pro-am, and playing with Tuscaloosa businessman Larry Wilkin. Price received several cellular phone calls during the round, including one from his wife, Joyce.

But after Price's round was complete, tournament director Phil Garcia alerted him to a problem back in the hotel. Sources told Garcia, and later the Mobile Press Register, 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", according to a hotel employee.

SI reports it uncovered two Alabama students who described a scene in Tuscaloosa that could have led UA athletics director Mal Moore to discuss Price's public representation of the university.

University President Robert Witt fired Price on Saturday, saying that the coach failed to live his "personal and professional life in a manner consistent with university policies."

Don Yaeger, the writer of the SI story, said in an interview with The Tuscaloosa News Tuesday that, contrary to broadcast news reports, the magazine did not pay Boudreaux for her story.

"That is completely untrue," Yaeger said. "Like [newspapers], we don't pay for stories. `Destiny' made a comment to a TV station down there, that she had given the exclusive rights to SI. I think many people misconstrued that. Frankly, we have no signed deal. She simply chose that of all the media types she could talk to, it was us and then not talk in detail before the story came out."

Yaeger confirmed that he personally interviewed Boudreaux, and spoke with the unnamed students over the phone. The reporter also said that SI extensively fact-checked the story before publication.

"There were multiple sources on the entire thing, and that sourcing is a very important part of what our attorneys do," Yaeger said.

"We have a complete fact-checking staff. After I'm done writing, that staff comes in and re-interviews everyone to make sure my facts are straight."

Mike Price could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

David Wasson can be reached at david.wasson@tuscaloosanews.com.