The End of the Ray Keller Saga

The legal battle between former Alabama booster Ray Keller and the NCAA reached an end Friday when a judge denied a request for a second trial, the Daily Sentinel is reporting. Jackson County Circuit Judge John Graham found that a previous ruling that dismissed a $5 million verdict in Keller’s favor did not entail the timber businessman to a new trial.

Keller sued the NCAA for defamation in connection with the penalties imposed on the University of Alabama football program in 2002. Keller maintained the sanctioning organization wrongly lumped him in with other boosters who were accused of making improper contacts and payments to recruits in the 1990s.

In November 2007, a Jackson County awarded Keller $5 million but that verdict was later thrown out by a judge who ruled it was awarded "as a result of passion or prejudice." Keller attorneys withdrew an appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court against Gordon's decision in February, days before filing the motion ruled on by the judge Friday.

Keller's original lawsuit was filed in February 2004 after the NCAA refused to issue a retraction of statements concerning Keller in a 2002 University of Alabama Infractions Report. The Alabama case involved a number of violations dating to the tenures of Mike DuBose and Gene Stallings.

The infractions committee found that Alabama boosters paid thousands of dollars to lure players to Alabama, most notoriously defensive lineman Albert Means of Memphis in 2000 and Kenny Smith of Stevenson, Ala., in 1996. Alabama was placed on five years’ probation and endured a two-year, post-season ban from a bowl or play in the Southeastern Conference championship game.

The NCAA also ordered the university to permanently ban Keller along with two other boosters, Logan Young and Wendell Smith, from having anything to do with the program (another booster, Jim Johnson, was barred for three years).