Welcome to the Southeastern Conference, Mike Price. This is what coaching with all the resources is like. When you leave Washington State for Alabama, you get the bigger budget, the bigger salary, the bigger tradition and the bigger fishbowl.

Sitting in his office in the second week of March, Price said all the right things. He talked about how, in 14 years as head coach at Washington State, people pretty much left him alone. He could go grab a drink with his buddies. Price sounded as if he understood the figurative contract he had signed with all that Alabama football represents.

"I'll never be able to go out and let my hair down," Price said. "Here, you always represent the program."

He said it. He heard it. After he had been out for a pop in Tuscaloosa, athletic director Mal Moore warned him. Now, Price knows what it means.

That's why, rather than go to a party for pro-am players in the Bruno's Memorial Classic in Birmingham on Tuesday night, Price phoned his assistant coaches who are on the road recruiting and apologized for the scandal that has erupted over whatever he did two weeks earlier after another Champions Tour pro-am in Milton, Fla.

"It's embarrassing," Price told one coach. "I hate it for Joyce [his wife]. I hate it for my kids [sons Aaron and Eric are on his staff]." Given that university president Robert Witt instructed his employees to say nothing, the staff member who recounted the conversation asked to go unnamed.

"He felt like we are going to have to go through it [the scrutiny] for a few days, and then we're going back to work," the assistant said. "He feels bad that we have to go through this. His sons feel bad for him but they're defending him. They feel like it's blown way out of proportion."

Here's what we know about what Price did, and/or what was done to him: The Birmingham News reported Thursday that Price spent several hundred dollars at a strip club. A football coach at a strip club? Shocking! In related news, the Detroit Tigers have a losing record and Shaquille O'Neal is a presence in the paint.

The Mobile Register reported that a young woman in a room registered to Price at a Pensacola, Fla., hotel ordered $1,000 worth of room service -- to go. Who she is and how she got in Price's room is of interest to the university, and, presumably, to Joyce Price. It's noteworthy that the Price's sons are, according to their fellow assistant, defending their dad against the accusation that he stepped out on mom.

Whatever happened, neither Price nor the university has given any details or any denials, which leaves the assumption that Price did something. Whatever happened, it warranted him being called into two meetings with Alabama athletic director Mal Moore over last weekend.

After Moore met with Price, Witt took over the matter and began to prove how little he knows about crisis management. Witt is probably a smart guy. He used to be dean of the business school at the University of Texas. He came to Alabama only days ago from the presidency of Texas-Arlington.

The first rule of managing a crisis: Nature and the Internet abhor a vacuum. Witt made a brief statement Tuesday that no disciplinary action is planned at this time. That's it. While Witt said nothing, the Internet sites and talk radio and the SEC coaching grapevine are using all the bandwidth they've got.

Finally, on Wednesday night, Witt released a statement that said he and Moore had discussed with Price his "behavior in certain public settings and the appropriateness of that behavior. We are involved in a very deliberative process of gathering information, discerning what is factual, and discussing these findings with Coach Price. Of course, I am also in contact with the chancellor and individual members of the Board of Trustees athletics committee. We hope to bring closure to this situation as soon as possible."

Witt knows enough about Alabama football to remember that four years ago, in the spring, head coach Mike DuBose made a public denial of rumors of an affair he had carried on with his secretary. Four months later, the university settled the secretary's sexual harassment case for $360,000. Witt is probably re-reading, if not re-assigning, the background checks made on Price before Alabama hired him last December.

If Witt fires Price, Alabama would have to hire its fourth coach in three years, and do so after spring practice, when Price installed new offensive and defensive schemes. That is in Price's favor. So, too, are those who work with him.

After spring practice ended, Price and the coaching staff went on a trip, an Alabama tradition that dates back nearly a half-century. "We played golf for two days," the assistant said. "Some went fishing. We were in Panama City. He likes to drink but I don't remember anybody helping him to bed. I've never seen a change in his demeanor. I haven't seen, 'Gosh, Coach is drunk.' "

And this: "Everybody has been working like crazy. Before our wives arrived in Tuscaloosa, the coaches would go to Dreamland (a BBQ joint, not a strip joing), eat dinner and get a few beers, but we didn't stay long. We all went and ate together. Once or twice we went out and ate and had a few drinks. Most of the time we went out and ate."

Washington State sports information director Rod Commons, who worked with Price for 26 years, said Wednesday, "I've never seen any type of inappropriate behavior. I've never seen him drunk in public. I don't know what to think. It's got me baffled."

Price has been charged with no crime, except in the court of public opinion. In the SEC in general, that's a hangin' court. After weeks of academic and behavioral coaching scandals in college basketball, Price's timing couldn't be worse. While Witt ponders, researches, decides, or does whatever he's doing, Alabama football remains in limbo. The quicker he makes his findings public, the quicker this scandal, or whatever it is, will go away.

"The point is," said Georgia athletic director Vince Dooley, who just fired basketball coach Jim Harrick because of academic fraud, "if they think he shouldn't be the coach. If they think that, then he shouldn't be the coach. They've got to answer that question. Can they justify keeping him? If they do, you can say it's a bad time to let him go, or whatever. If they don't want him, it doesn't make any difference."

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