It’s Tapes 22, Auburn 0 : Allegations: Former player Eric Ramsey is releasing piecemeal conversations he claims show he was paid to play.

As is always the case this time of year, the coffee shops and boardrooms of this state are buzzing with college football talk, although little of it has anything to do with which teams are headed for the Sugar Bowl.

Alabamians are talking about The Tapes.

The furor began last month when former Auburn defensive back Eric Ramsey said in an interview with the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser that he had received improper cash payments from Auburn coaches and boosters, and that he had tapes to back up his claims.

Ramsey, a two-year starter at cornerback who concluded his eligibility last season, told the newspaper that he secretly had recorded conversations for several years, and that one conversation implicates Pat Dye, Auburn’s football coach and athletic director.

“What I’ve got, they can’t deny,” Ramsey was quoted as saying, “because it’s their voices.”

The article provided only a summary of some of the tapes’ contents. But excerpts from one batch of tapes, published last Sunday in the Birmingham (Ala.) News, appear to corroborate in detail some of Ramsey’s claims.

Now, Ramsey, a 10th-round draft choice who was cut by the Kansas City Chiefs, has a state hanging on words preserved on microcassette--22 tapes in all.

Said Ramsey’s lawyer, Donald Watkins: “Ultimately, I think, the Eric Ramsey tapes will have the same impact on college athletics that the Rodney King videotape had on law enforcement.”

If nothing else, the tapes could be a windfall for the NCAA, which, hamstrung by the lack of subpoena power, often must build its infractions cases on threads of oral testimony.

However, Watkins has decided that the NCAA will not interview Ramsey or obtain the tapes until their contents have been disclosed publicly, a process he began last week by playing conversations between Ramsey and Auburn booster Bill (Corky) Frost for reporters from the Birmingham News.

In one of the excerpts, Frost, a Lilburn, Ga., contractor, promises to send Ramsey a case of steaks as well as “bonus” payments.

In another, Frost and Ramsey talk about supplementing payments Ramsey was receiving from Frank Young, Auburn’s recruiting coordinator at the time, for living expenses.

“You want it up to $400? I want to make sure what you are trying to do,” Frost tells Ramsey.

According to Watkins, two other batches of Ramsey’s tapes, covering conversations with Auburn assistant coaches and with Dye, will be made public in the next few weeks.

Dye has refused to discuss the Ramsey matter in detail, although at his weekly news conference Tuesday, he indicated that he has doubts about the authenticity of the tapes.

“I don’t know what’s true and what’s not true,” he said. “I don’t know if those tapes are authentic or not. They say they are, but I haven’t heard them and haven’t had them analyzed by somebody who knows whether the tapes have been tampered with or not. So, who knows?”

According to Watkins, the tapes are genuine.

“The typical tape is Eric calling the Auburn athletic department and asking for coach so-and-so,” Watkins said in an interview in his Birmingham office. “Then the receptionist puts him through to the coach, and the coach gets on the phone and identifies himself. The conversation starts from there. On other tapes, Eric is in a coach’s office, and there’s a call coming in for the coach. The coach halts the conversation and identifies himself on the tape.”

In 10-plus seasons at Auburn, Dye has rebuilt the Tigers into a national power and become something of a Southern icon.

He is one of a dwindling number of college football coaches who also hold the position of athletic director, and he has developed close ties with the most influential member of Auburn’s Board of Trustees, Montgomery banker Robert Lowder. According to records on file with the Alabama State Ethics Commission, Dye has received income as both a director and consultant for Lowder’s company, Colonial Bancgroup.

Five years ago, Auburn took a beating nationally when the school administration did not object to Dye’s decision to play fullback Brent Fullwood in the Florida Citrus Bowl against USC on Jan. 1, 1987, despite the disclosure that Fullwood hadn’t attended class in several months.

To some faculty members, the Fullwood episode and others like it have occurred at Auburn because President James Martin has failed to exercise the kind of institutional control over athletics being emphasized by the NCAA Presidents Commission and other groups.

“(Martin) doesn’t assert himself when dealing with people like Dye and Lowder and other influential alumni,” said Auburn entomology professor Gary Mullen, who, as chairman of the school’s University Senate last year, publicly questioned the Dye-Lowder connection, “and that has created serious problems.”

Martin announced in April that he would step down next year, and the school is searching for his successor.

Said Mullen: “Football is the tail, and it wags the rest of the university. That should be changed. The question is how long will it take in this setting to do so?”

What effect the Ramsey case might have, Mullen said, “depends on how much they have on Dye.”

Asked how the tapes portray Dye, Watkins said: “There’s an old saying: The fish rots from the head down. That’s all I’m going to say about the Dye tapes.”

In the Montgomery Advertiser story, Ramsey was quoted as saying he taped a face-to-face conversation with Dye in the summer of 1990. In that conversation, Ramsey said, he spoke to Dye of receiving money from Young and asked Dye to use his influence to arrange a bank loan.

Watkins told The Times that after this conversation, Ramsey obtained an unsecured loan of $9,000 for “living expenses” from the Auburn branch of Colonial Bank. According to Watkins, Ramsey was not required to fill out an application or provide a financial statement.

Asked how he could show that special arrangements were made on Ramsey’s behalf in the matter, Watkins replied: “We have tape-recorded conversations of Eric’s dealing with the loan officer.”

Watkins paused to laugh softly before completing the thought. “Eric was pretty effective with his recording techniques.”

Indeed, Ramsey told the Birmingham News that he and his wife, Twilitta, began taping Auburn coaches and boosters even before Ramsey began playing for the Tigers as a redshirt freshman in 1987. Ramsey said he used a microcassette recorder, which he concealed in his jacket or pants when he taped face-to-face conversations.

Ramsey told the newspaper that the idea of taping the conversations “popped into my head” when he was considering a way to document what he perceived to be abusive treatment by coaches.

“My intention was never to ‘get’ Auburn,” he was quoted as saying. “I was just thinking maybe I should start taping these conversations. I wasn’t going to use them. I was going to be like all the other players--do my part, go on and get a degree.

“But the tapes started getting better . . . and better . . . and better.”

And as Ramsey finished his time at Auburn, he grew bitter, believing, he said, that Auburn coaches limited his exposure to NFL scouts and also played a role in causing him to fail an English course he needed for his degree.

Back in Alabama after being cut by the Chiefs, with no degree and no pro football prospects, he went public with the tapes and retained Watkins.

A 43-year-old civil rights attorney who includes Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington among his clients, Watkins has come under fire for his decision to parcel the story out in increments to the media before making Ramsey and the tapes available to the NCAA.

“The average NCAA investigation takes about a year. The longer we put this thing off, the longer Auburn is under a cloud,” said Jack Venable, an Auburn trustee and state legislator. “I want this thing completed, whatever the findings and penalties are.

“I’m at a loss to explain why Mr. Watkins is acting in this manner. Whether he believes there are racial problems at Auburn. . . . Let’s face it, we don’t have a lot of blacks at Auburn. . . . I don’t know what he is after. I really don’t.”

While Watkins conceded that he is hoping to draw interest in Ramsey’s story “from a documentary standpoint or TV/film standpoint,” he said he simply is reacting to public demand to know the tapes’ contents--a demand, he said, that could not be met properly if the tapes were released in one fell swoop.

“Eric captured these experiences and conversations over a three-year period,” he said, “and I think it’s unrealistic for the public to think Eric can release (the tapes) in a mass fashion. It’s simply a matter of sheer quantity of recorded conversation.”

So Auburn braces for what may come, and Ramsey braces for the fallout, “secluded,” according to Watkins, at an undisclosed location in Alabama.

“Eric is a clean-cut kid,” Watkins said. “Very articulate. Very intelligent. Very mature for a 23-year-old young man. And I admire and respect his courage.

“In today’s society, people don’t like whistle-blowers. It’s ‘kill the messenger.’ That makes me respect him even more.”