Gallion v. the NCAA Sunday, May 02, 2004 By THOMAS MURPHY Sports Reporter
MONTGOMERY -- When Tommy Gallion gets involved in your legal proceedings, you'd better brace yourself, cover the kids' ears and heed this caution: Objects in your mirror may be larger than they appear.
The Montgomery-based lawyer was so locked into a recent cell phone conversation with a radio station that he failed to see a car cruising beside him as he searched for a parking space.
Listeners to the radio show were treated to the squeal of brakes, the screech of a minor impact and vintage Gallion: "Oh s--, I just hit somebody."
Alabama governors, attorneys general and even Hank Williams Jr. have been left wondering what hit them after encountering Gallion.
Gallion is representing Volkert & Associates Inc. in the engineering firm's highly publicized lawsuit against two members of the Mobile County school board. He and his law firm -- Haskell, Slaughter, Young & Gallion, LLC of Montgomery -- have taken on several government agencies and represented powerful greyhound tracks owner Milton McGregor.
But Gallion's notoriety among sports fans has spiked since he became a cen tral figure in the hottest issue to ignite the Southeastern Conference in years.
As the combative lead attorney for "Team Cottrell," Gallion is challenging the NCAA's treatment of the University of Alabama football program, which was hit with damaging sanctions in 2002, while fighting to restore the reputations of his clients, former Tide assistant coaches Ronnie Cottrell and Ivy Williams.
Gallion has waged a verbal, public war, trying to prove a conspiracy existed between the NCAA, University of Tennessee boosters, UT football coach Phillip Fulmer, the FBI, the Justice Department and others to destroy Crimson Tide football.
His role in the case has football fans from Mobile to Knoxville wondering: "Who is Tommy Gallion?"
"He's bad to the bone," said Cottrell, the Brewton native who filed the $60 million defamation lawsuit against the NCAA and others.
Cocky and contentious:
Thomas Travis Gallion III, 60, wears his status as a fourth-generation University of Alabama graduate as a badge of honor and has for 32 years built his reputation in state legal circles as a firebrand attorney not afraid to take on anyone or any cause.
"He doesn't back down from anybody," said Memphis attorney Phillip Shanks, a member of the self-titled Team Cottrell. "I sit in awe watching the way Tommy has brought together the disparate elements of this lawsuit and the way he's able to keep all the facts at instant recall."
Montgomery attorney Tommy Keene has known Gallion for more than 30 years. Though he has never appeared in court against Gallion, he has dealt with the flamboyant lawyer while defending former University of Alabama compliance officials Gene Marsh and Marie Robbins in the Cottrell lawsuit. Marsh and Robbins were dismissed from that lawsuit two weeks ago and have now given affidavits that help Cottrell's side.
"He's a gregarious, outgoing fellow," Keene said. "He loves to get a cause like this one and promote it and talk about it.
"He's not a traditional, what I'd call a plaintiff or defense lawyer. He's more a cause lawyer."
He's a cocky and contentious lawyer, too, according to both friends and foes. In venturing into high-profile, bitter legal confrontations with the NCAA and, most recently, Tennessee's Fulmer, Gallion's legal maneuvering has evolved into a long-running sideshow.
Then again, Gallion viewed the NCAA's case against Alabama much the same way.
The centerpiece of the NCAA's case was an accusation that Alabama booster Logan Young paid Memphis-Trezevant High School coach Lynn Lang $115,000 to steer All-American defensive lineman Albert Means to Alabama. After a 1-year investigation, the Tide football program was judged by the NCAA to be guilty of 11 major violations, including other boosters allegedly providing cash and a car for Alabama football players.
When the NCAA punished Alabama in February 2002 -- giving the Tide five years of probation, a two-year bowl ban and cutting 21 scholarships over three years -- infractions committee chairman Thomas Yeager said: "They were absolutely staring down the barrel of the gun" and added Alabama narrowly avoided the NCAA's dreaded death penalty.
Cottrell wasn't named in any of the major violations but was found by the NCAA to have accepted an improper loan from Young of $55,000, then not reporting it when asked directly about it by the NCAA.
In December 2002, Cottrell filed his $60 million civil suit, saying he had been defamed by the NCAA and had been unable to find another job in coaching because of the investigation. Williams joined the suit last summer.
Gallion became the lead attorney in the lawsuit and insisted the university and those accused of wrongdoing were denied due process by the NCAA.
But some now contend Gallion has veered far away from the original suit and become obsessed with embarrassing the NCAA and Tennessee.
"He continues to try to attack the NCAA on issues that have almost nothing to do with his clients' case," said Wally Renfro, the senior advisor to NCAA President Myles Brand. "I won't try to speculate on the reasons why he does that."
But Gallion's "Alabama against the world" approach has obviously played well in the state.
"I think he's arguably the most popular figure in Alabama football circles right now," said Paul Finebaum, the Birmingham-based radio talk show host and Mobile Register columnist whose Finebaum Radio Network frequently lends Gallion a platform to fire away at the NCAA, Fulmer and others.
Gallion -- with his curly, graying hair, alert eyes, slightly bulbous nose and patented Deep South gentleman's drawl -- has stamped his face and voice into the state historical record. He is the symbol of Cottrell's rage against the machine and the rank-and-file Alabama fans' frustrations over the football program's costly run-in with the NCAA.
As much as he would like to restore his clients' names in the coaching industry, Gallion would also like to shake the foundations of the NCAA. When he contemplates the NCAA process that punished Alabama for recruiting violations, his voice begins to rise.
"They had a hearing and the NCAA is the investigator," Gallion said. "They are the hearing officer. They are the triers of fact and they are the appellate. They are like the Vatican. They are their own king.
"That's what has coaches upset all across the country. If they decide they want to get you, they will get you."
Conspiracy theory:
In pursuing Cottrell's lawsuit, Gallion says he has uncovered a conspiracy that shows Fulmer, Alabama-based recruiting analyst Tom Culpepper, a selection of Tennessee boosters in Memphis and various figures within the NCAA set out to destroy Alabama football.
Photos published for the first time in today's Register show Fulmer and Culpepper happily greeting each other moments after Tennessee beat Alabama on Oct. 21, 2000, in Knoxville. Ten weeks earlier, Fulmer used information gathered from Culpepper to become a "secret witness" in the NCAA case against Alabama, which Gallion contends is inappropriate.
Gallion believes his clients were sacrificed as scapegoats (or "thrown under the bus" in his parlance) in a grand scheme to eliminate the influence of former Alabama booster Young and damage the Tide football program.
Gallion's efforts have escalated the Alabama-Tennessee rivalry from the bitter but sometimes charming Hatfields-and-McCoys variety into full-scale and damaging acrimony.
Gallion maintains Fulmer cut a deal with the NCAA whereby the Tennessee coach offered information about alleged violations at Alabama in exchange for Tennessee receiving a free pass from the NCAA in various investigations. The NCAA has vehemently denied this claim.
Gallion has written University of Tennessee athletics director Mike Hamilton, demanding the school investigate his allegations that Fulmer was involved in arranging illegal payments for UT players. Gallion also demanded a further probe into alleged payments made to former quarterback Tee Martin of Mobile and into academic-fraud allegations.
The NCAA cleared the University of Tennessee of wrongdoing in the Martin affair and of academic fraud. Hamilton said recently the university was close to completing its investigation into the allegations of improper payments, but he did not respond to an interview request by the Register.
Yet Gallion keeps hammering away, which is how he has earned his reputation. Gallion doesn't just promote his clients' cause. He points a finger in the chest, challenges, calls names and rattles cages.
"He's fond of hyperbole and he'll quote Scripture or anything," Keene said.
"He's so fiery," Cottrell said. "There's been several times, in meetings with different parties in the lawsuit, he gets so red-faced like he's going to come across the table. I certainly understand how he strikes fear in people he's opposing."
The NCAA has been his latest favorite target. Gallion has likened the NCAA's due-process procedures to Iraqi justice under Saddam Hussein and has called the NCAA "one chromosome removed from the Gestapo."
Gallion's familiar rail: "I want the NCAA exposed and I want every dirty character in this entire thing exposed."
Gallion freely admits his zeal in badgering the NCAA goes beyond the fight for his clients. It strikes at the damage done to his alma mater.
"I love Alabama," he said. "It has a lot to do with Tide pride and a college football team I'm proud of, even though I've never been in a booster club."
Price of fighting:
Gallion says he has received death threats stemming from the allegations he has leveled against Fulmer and Tennessee boosters.
"If he and I spent the weekend in Knoxville, we'd both be killed," Finebaum said with only a touch of jest. "He would be first, but he'd only beat me by a few seconds."
But death threats are nothing new for Gallion.
His father, MacDonald Gallion, was an Alabama attorney general who ran unsuccessfully against George Wallace for governor in the early 1960s. When MacDonald Gallion began fighting widespread corruption in Phenix City in the early 1950s, the family endured threats that forced them to flee the state.
"Phenix City was one of the largest racketeering cities in the country," Gallion said. "The family had to go into hiding in Sarasota."
Now Gallion has built his career pursuing high stakes and very public litigation.
He helped Jett Williams, who grew up as an adopted child in Mobile, successfully prove she was the daughter of Hank Williams Sr. and win half the royalties on her father's estate. Gallion, despite being a proud Republican, has gone after two sitting GOP governors, Guy Hunt and Fob James.
Now, he has become the leading figure in the lengthy public debate over Alabama's treatment by the NCAA and the organization's methods of prosecuting the Alabama case. Gallion has been a frequent talk-radio guest in the months since he took the lead attorney's role for Team Cottrell and he's a ready interview for journalists.
Gallion has been so omnipresent and outspoken in his criticism of the NCAA, even some Alabama fans who would like to see his cause succeed have grown weary of his grandstanding.
"Why am I grandstanding?" Gallion asked. "These low-life people at the NCAA put my clients under a gag order for two years while they themselves through their various media leaks put (their information) out.
"Ronnie Cottrell, a guy threatened to beat him up in Mobile. He was spit at in his hometown of Brewton.
"If that's grandstanding, then I'm on the grandstand. In fact, they haven't seen grandstanding yet. I'm going to bellow from the mountaintop until this whole thing is uncovered and the horror of what it's done to individuals and a school like Alabama is disclosed."
Some see Gallion's public outcries as the most effective way of combating the NCAA.
"It might not be perfect if he were representing a Fortune 500 company, but in this particular case, it's necessary," Finebaum said. "By being bombastic, being a street fighter, he's been able to get some people's attention."
Gallion has infuriated the NCAA with his mode of attack in the defamation lawsuit. His methods have been called into account by NCAA lawyers, who have filed grievances against Gallion and Shanks with the Alabama Bar Association.
The NCAA fought to have documents regarding Alabama's case remain under a protective order in the lawsuit filed in Tuscaloosa County and won on that front. But when those same documents became available through discovery by attorney Jim Neal in Young's federal conspiracy case in Memphis, Gallion obtained the papers and publicly trumpeted the contents.
The documents were valuable to his cause, as they showed Fulmer had arranged and tape-recorded a meeting with Culpepper in which Fulmer encouraged Culpepper to come forward with allegations against Alabama football.
Fulmer contacted NCAA investigator Rich Johanningmeier and eventually supplied information as a confidential witness in the probe into Alabama football, the documents show. Culpepper did the same.
NCAA spokesperson Jeff Howard criticized Gallion's use of those documents.
"The association is very disappointed with the cavalier way documents -- including confidential interviews -- have been handled by some attorneys involved in these matters," Howard said in an Associated Press story. "Making such documents public has jeopardized the fair treatment of these coaches and their institutions."
Renfro has crossed swords with Gallion in print at times during the process. Gallion has heckled Renfro on occasion, even Renfro's appearance on an ESPN "Outside the Lines" segment in which Renfro appeared before a backdrop of palm trees while in south Florida.
While vacationing on the Alabama coast recently, Gallion was doing a radio interview with Finebaum when he broke off for a second, then said, "Sorry, I thought I saw Wally Renfro surfing up onto the beach."
Said Finebaum: "He's perhaps the most fascinating figure I've covered in a long time. I'm willing to take my hits from my critics who complain about why I have him on all the time. It's Don Quixote and the impossible dream. He's taken on one of the biggest and most corrupt organizations, in my opinion.
"When you're around him, he's infectious. He's an extremely bright guy, quoting Shakespeare, every famous Greek philosopher. I became, to say the least, an advocate for their side."
Gallion the egotist:
Gallion's critics harp on his arrogance. He doesn't deny the charge.
"Am I arrogant, egotistical? Yeah, my wife describes me as that," Gallion said. "And she's dead on the money. She does it in a loving way, but yeah.
"Because I love a good fight. I love litigation. I'm not timid. I've taken on two governors. I'm a Republican and they're both Republicans. And I was successful in those ventures."
Gallion's bombast is legendary. He might be filled with more hyperbole than a gangster-rap CD.
When Williams joined in Cottrell's lawsuit in July, Gallion declared: "We're going to throw a little grenade out today. I expect to have the bombs to hit later."
Gallion's methods are also open to debate.
He's been called a "shameless self-promoter of an attorney" by Tony Basilio of Metro Pulse Online in Tennessee.
"I'm fond of Tommy," Keene said. "I don't necessarily agree with everything he does but that would be the case with any attorney."
Keene's clients -- Marsh and Robbins -- were dismissed two weeks ago from the Cottrell lawsuit after negotiations between the parties.
Before the two sides would listen to each other, however, Keene was tough in his appraisal of Gallion.
"Mr. Gallion is doing a lot of talking," Keene said in an interview with Business Alabama in 2003. "Marsh and Robbins are being swept up by Gallion's broad overreach."
Finebaum, who was admittedly critical of Cottrell during the NCAA investigation, was a defendant in the original lawsuit. But with ESPN college football analyst and Mobile resident Mike Gottfried acting as a go-between, Finebaum agreed to meet with Team Cottrell.
Finebaum said he was "a little tense" heading into the meeting in Gallion's Montgomery office, an antebellum structure that served as the governor's mansion before, during and after the Civil War.
"We were of the opinion we were going to sit there and listen, but we weren't going to (concede) anything," Finebaum said. "Three hours later, Tommy was still talking. He went through the entire case."
Finebaum, who said it "turned my stomach to be on the same side with some of these people, particularly the NCAA," eventually agreed to give his deposition in the case in return for his dismissal as a defendant.
"I made an independent decision, talked to Tommy ... and we kind of hit it off and became best friends," Finebaum said.
When the NCAA's Renfro suggested Gallion and Shanks owed NCAA investigator Johanningmeier, Fulmer and others an apology for the tactics they have employed, Gallion erupted.
"Wanting me to apologize to Phil Fulmer?" Gallion gasped. "God, I wanted to spew vomit all over the Sunday paper."
'Where is Alabama?':
Gallion's criticism has extended to the University of Alabama administration, which has been mostly an idle bystander in the aftermath of its NCAA sanctions.
"What I want to know: Where is Alabama?" he asked in a February interview. "What have they done? Nothing.
"If Bear Bryant were alive, heads would roll. Bear Bryant would be, in my opinion, on a platform, demanding Phil Fulmer apologize and that the NCAA apologize, give them back their scholarships and make them whole.
"The (NCAA) investigation's been closed. All they've done to this point in time is basically ignore us."
University of Alabama President Robert Witt declined an interview request for this story.
Gallion, who accepted the Cottrell case on a contingency-fee basis with the exception of expenses, which are being paid by the plaintiff's brother, Danny Cottrell, denied that wealthy Tide booster Young has bankrolled his legal efforts.
"I never knew Logan Young before this case," Gallion said. "I know one thing: He's tight as hell. We went up there to meet with him and I had to pick up the tab. He wouldn't even buy me a cold soda."
Perhaps it is the egotist in Gallion that compels him to deny he intends to run for public office without even being asked. Certainly Gallion enjoys the spotlight, even while saying his wrangling with the NCAA has done nothing but cost him money thus far.
"It's fun," he said. "You want to know what I'm doing? I'm having a hell of a good time. I know it sounds strange. From an egotistical standpoint, I want to be remembered at least that I gave it a hell of a try to clear Alabama and my clients' names."
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