Logan Young (1940–2006) was a
Memphis, Tennessee businessman and a booster for the
University of Alabama football program. In 2005, Young was found guilty in federal court for charges relating to his role in a scheme to pay a high school football coach $150,000 to help recruit a player to Alabama.
Personal
Young graduated from
Osceola High School in
Osceola, Arkansas and then attended
Vanderbilt University in
Nashville, Tennessee, during which time he befriended legendary Alabama football coach,
Bear Bryant
Paul William "Bear" Bryant (September 11, 1913 – January 26, 1983) was an American college football player and coach. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest college football coaches of all time, and best known as the head coach of ...
, through his father.
Young inherited an
Arkansas food manufacturing company
and owned the
Memphis Showboats, a
United States Football League team in the 1980s.
Alabama scandal
NCAA sanctions
During the
2000 season, an assistant football coach at Trezevant High School in Memphis claimed that Young had paid Lynn Lang, the Trezevant head football coach, approximately $150,000 to encourage defensive lineman
Albert Means to sign with
Alabama. Following the investigation by the NCAA, Alabama received a five-year probation, a two-year
bowl ban, and a reduced number of scholarships that the university could award—limiting them by twenty-one scholarships over the next three years.
Alabama sanctions
Amid fears that the NCAA was considering hitting the school with a "
death penalty
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...
," which would have shut down the football team for at least one year, Alabama permanently disassociated itself from Young in 2000. Alabama not only banned him from any involvement with the athletic program, but stripped him of his $40,000 luxury box at
Bryant–Denny Stadium and canceled an insurance policy that would have paid $500,000 toward the Paul "Bear" Bryant Museum on campus upon Young's death.
Young was convicted in federal court on conspiracy to commit
racketeering
Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit.
Originally and of ...
, crossing state lines to commit racketeering, and arranging bank withdrawals to cover up a crime.
Young's defense claimed Lang, who was also convicted of a racketeering conspiracy, was motivated to testify against Young in exchange for a lighter sentence.
He was eventually sentenced to six months in jail, though he continued to firmly deny any wrongdoing.
Death
On April 11, 2006, Young was found dead in his home in Memphis.
Originally thought to be a homicide due to the large amount of blood found throughout the house, local police concluded that Young's death was accidental. This conclusion however is not without controversy. According to Homicide Lt. Joe Scott in a press conference, Young tripped while carrying a salad and soft drink up a set of stairs and hit his head on an iron railing. The fall onto the railing opened a large gash across the top of Young's head, causing him to drop to the floor bleeding profusely. After lying on the floor for some time, Young got up and walked bleeding through several rooms of his house before ending up in his second-floor bedroom. According to Scott, Young walked past several telephones but didn't place an emergency call.
An appeal of the federal conviction on money laundering and conspiracy charges was pending when Young died.
References
Further reading
{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, Logan
1940 births
2006 deaths
NCAA sanctions
Vanderbilt University alumni