Drinks, dances and tips at a strip joint -- $500.

Entire room service menu (to go) -- $1,000.

Alabama football -- Price-less.

Anyone wondering whether Alabama football could sink any lower, wonder no more.

The university administration may view Saturday as the quickest, painless way to start over. A new coach will be introduced soon, and the cottage industry of lap-dance jokes at Alabama's expense has been shuttered.

But as Bill Parcells likes to say, it is what it is. The Crimson Tide hit rock bottom Saturday afternoon, and there's a Sam's Warehouse-sized barrel of blame to pass around.

Mike Price, by doing something stupid (the details of which still have not come to light), left himself open for this show of righteousness by university president Robert Witt. Price lost his job because, Witt said Saturday, he failed to conduct his "personal and professional life in a manner consistent with university policies."

Earlier this week, according to what Price said to his staff Friday, Witt told Price, "If it's personal, I'd like for you to be the coach. But I've got to act as the president of the university."

Price didn't act like the coach at a university (actually, he did, given the proclivities of a lot of coaches, but that's another story). Given the legacy of below-the-waist thinking by coaches in Tuscaloosa -- former basketball coach Wimp Sanderson's affair with his secretary, former football coach Mike DuBose's affair with his secretary, which resulted in DuBose reimbursing for the $360,000 it paid out in a sexual harassment suit -- Witt may have felt that he had nothing to lose by firing Price.

Witt just arrived in Tuscaloosa a few weeks ago. He had no personal capital invested in Price, whom the university hired in December. By firing Price, the university won't have to wait and see if he can survive the cutthroats and whispers in the SEC recruiting world. If Price stayed and didn't survive, odds are that the university would have to pay him and his staff more than if Alabama tossed him out today.

Cut him loose. Take a stand. Do what's "right."

Anytime someone uses morality as a reason to fire a football coach, the inquiry light gets lit. Price brought this upon himself, yes, but he didn't deserve to lose his job. He did nothing illegal.

He embarrassed himself and he embarrassed the university, but I missed the memo declaring human foibles as a firing offense.

On the day after two online magazines published stories that William Bennett, the self-appointed morals czar of Washington, has a gambling jones, the risk of absolute moral standards is obvious.

What's done, even if it's done with the skill and grace of Mo Vaughn fielding a grounder, is done. Athletic director Mal Moore, who hired Price but didn't take the fall for it, and Witt will now search for a coach who will try and make everyone forget that Price ever crossed the state line.

Former Jacksonville Jaguars coach Tom Coughlin, a straight arrow and a winner at Boston College a decade ago, has expressed an interest in the job.

If Witt and Moore are smart, they will pursue Sylvester Croom, a Packers assistant and an All-American center for Bear Bryant in the mid-1970s. Croom's name is on the "Commitment to Excellence" award that Crimson Tide coaches hand out every spring.

More important, Croom would be the first African-American head coach in the Southeastern Conference. At a time when Alabama needs to be seen as groundbreaking instead of record-breaking -- surely, four head coaches in three years is some sort of record -- Witt and Moore should take a hard look at Croom.

Hiring a black coach would help Alabama rehabilitate itself. It would prove that the university is thinking forward. If Witt wants to move on, hiring a Croom would move Alabama to the front page for doing something progressive.

Given the track record of the football program over the last several years, that may be too much to ask.

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