Roy Kramer is an easy man to underestimate, if one happens to be an unvarnished Yankee who subscribes to the notion that, in today's complex and ever-shifting business world, nothing suggests a lack of sophistication more than a little old man with a drawl.

The Southeastern Conference commissioner hunches when he stands, and shuffles when he walks. A thin crop of snowy white hair gives way to a reddish forehead. Thick, fashion-free glasses help him see straight. He smiles, revealing a set of choppers that appear loosely attached to his gums.

	Outgoing SEC commissioner Roy Kramer leaves a legacy as the most powerful man in college football.

Kramer, 72 and dumb like a fox, won't deny you this impression of a simple country man past his prime, if you dare go there. Indeed, he seems to encourage it. He'll tell you, with a quick laugh, that no way he's the most powerful man in college sports, that his influence has been vastly overstated.

But in the South, they know better.

In the South, Roy Kramer gets booed.

In the South, University of Alabama fans are so sure he could have spared their football team the pain of relatively serious NCAA sanctions that during the trophy presentation at the SEC Baseball Tournament in Birmingham in May, the jeers for Kramer were as vigorous as the cheers for the champion Crimson Tide team.

The crowd's disgust rained down on Kramer even though it may have been his last public appearance as commissioner. He's retiring this summer after nearly a half-century in high school and college sports, most of it on the NCAA level as a coach and administrator.

"Ah, that's all part of it," Kramer said, recounting the incident. "That's not the first time I've been booed. I've been booed at probably half the schools in this conference."

This is what Kramer gets for doing his job well, perhaps too well. As lead administrator for the hyper-competitive, 12-school conference since 1990, his marching orders from the league presidents have been to raise as much money as possible and to channel football lust into bottom-line revenue, and to steer members through the occasional crisis.

He has done that with such efficiency, such consistent success, that over time a reputation was forged: Roy Kramer can fix anything. Few of his lay critics can tell you exactly how that happens, how he supposedly manipulates the NCAA machinery to dictate outcomes. They just know it in their bones, for they've seen him pull a rabbit from a hat too many times.

"It's really incredible," said Paul Finebaum, a Birmingham sports talk show host whose program is broadcast in four SEC states. "The rank and file Alabama fan believes Roy Kramer sold out, or least didn't do enough, to help Alabama. It started out as something the fringe element was saying, but now it's mushroomed into something much bigger.

"It's to the point where if I were Roy, I'm not sure I would want to live in Birmingham much longer."

The man who got things done
Kramer is in this predicament because the NCAA, as a vast member-driven body, is a mind-numbingly bureaucratic enterprise. You've heard about the 500-page rulebook from complaining coaches. There also are more than 118 committees, some of which issue rulings and some of which recommend "legislation" -- the NCAA's word -- to the relevant division Management Council, which after "initial formal consideration" may grant initial approval for formal comment by the division members, then after 60 days reconvene for "second consideration" and possible approval, which doesn't constitute final approval, because it still needs to go up to the relevant division Board of Directors, which then engages in an even more byzantine process that could involve an "override vote" that gets the whole membership involved or "significant modification" that sends the legislation back down to ….

There are some who actually stay awake long enough to understand how the NCAA works. There are few with the patience, persistence, relationships, incentive and knowledge of the organization's subtleties to consistently use the structure to their advantage.

	“	The BCS is the most significant thing to occur in intercollegiate athletics in the last 15 years, because it re-arranged the chairs. It's the golden rule: If you have the gold, you rule. And they rule. ”
		— Bill Carr, a former Florida athletics director

Kramer is among the latter. The ultimate insider, he even served once on something called the NCAA Committee on Committees.

"Clearly, when it comes to discussions of football matters, if Roy says something, it has a good chance of passing," said Mike Tranghese, commissioner of the Big East Conference. "If I didn't agree with Roy, I would think long and hard before I would say I disagree."

Kramer's eyes twinkle with laughter at mention of his perceived sway.

"I've lost more votes than anybody in the history of the NCAA," he said.

Sort of like how Babe Ruth had once struck out more than anyone in baseball history.

His home runs include the creation of the first super-conference, made possible by the addition of Arkansas and South Carolina in 1990. The new teams allowed him to split the conference into divisions, with the SEC East and SEC West champions meeting in a lucrative title game. He drove even more money into SEC coffers when he negotiated the first conference television contract.

Then, just as he was qualifying for Medicare, Kramer founded the Bowl Championship Series. College football fans know this as the controversial substitute for the true national championship format for which they clamor, but athletics officials recognize the BCS as something more profound -- the tool that broadened the gulf between the have and have-not schools by funneling nearly all the bowl money to members of the largest conferences.

"The BCS is the most significant thing to occur in intercollegiate athletics in the last 15 years, because it re-arranged the chairs," said Bill Carr, a former Florida athletics director who now runs a consulting business that helps schools find athletics administrators. "It's the golden rule: If you have the gold, you rule. And they rule."

When NCAA headquarters contemplated getting in on the action -- recommending that a football issues committee study the viability of a football playoff system -- Kramer and the BCS commissioners killed the idea before it could gain currency. The Division I Board of Directors, controlled by presidents representing the large conferences, ordered that there be no discussion of that topic.

A reorganization of the NCAA in 1997 made it easier for Kramer to influence matters. Division I schools now have more control over Division I issues, and their feelings usually are channeled through designated conference representatives on key committees. That format effectively gives conference commissioners plenty of power, especially those from the BCS conferences.

"I'm not sure Roy can make a lot of change happen, but he can keep a lot of things from happening," said Terry Holland, former Virginia athletics director. "He has the ability to find people who are going to oppose something and build a coalition. It's like when I was growing up in Sampson County (N.C.) and they were trying to legalize alcohol. The bootleggers and the preachers were the ones who fought it the hardest, because someone got them together. That's what Roy does."

Kramer is a machine of perpetual motion that age has not slowed. In his final football season, he still was attending two games each Saturday, flying from city to city in his charter jet, shaking hands, winning points and working the cell phone all the way. He stays up late at night, reading the early online editions of the next morning's newspapers.

	Roy Kramer never shied away from the spotlight -- or a microphone.

At the old-style NCAA convention, where 2,600 delegates from Divisions I through III got in a room and debated issues both grand and trivial, Kramer was an unmistakable presence. Often, NCAA officials would look out at the microphone stands situated around the convention floor to find Kramer waiting to bellow some thought that challenged the NCAA's amateur, egalitarian sensibilities.

"The old joke was that Roy was the only guy in the room who didn't need a microphone," said Steve Morgan, a former NCAA vice president. "When he got up to the mike, you better have had a sound engineer available to turn it down because otherwise he was going to blow you back."

Kramer also knows how to whisper in the back alleys where other decisions are made.

In a wrongful termination lawsuit that was resolved three years ago, former Ole Miss football coach Billy Brewer argued that Kramer encouraged the university to fire him in 1994 as a way to reduce sanctions the school would receive for recruiting violations mostly committed by boosters.

One of the key documents that emerged in the trial was a memo drawn up by Mary Ann Connell, a university lawyer who had summarized a conversation with Kramer about how to manage the allegations. At the time, Kramer was a member of the NCAA Committee on Infractions but was recused from the case because of the conflict of interest.

Stamped "CONFIDENTIAL" with orders to destroy after reading, Connell wrote that Kramer called her to "discuss some tough decisions" that the university would have to make after reviewing the NCAA's evidence. She wrote that Kramer "thought we would have a very hard time defending Billy Brewer in any of this" due to a previous NCAA infractions case eight years earlier that involved Brewer.

"He foresees a bad parting of the ways between the institution and Billy as this progresses," Connell wrote to then-Ole Miss chancellor R. Gerald Turner.

Brewer lost his job shortly after that note. Ole Miss ended up with a two-year bowl ban and was restricted from playing television games for one year.

"Kramer was just hunting for a way to put it all on Billy so he could keep the school out of trouble," said Gary Carnathan, one of Brewer's lawyers. "It didn't make any difference whether Billy did anything wrong or not. He didn't even want to hear from Billy."

In court, Kramer denied trying to make a scapegoat of Brewer. Brewer won the lawsuit anyway, a jury awarding him $221,355.

"He's a powerful man, and everybody knows that," said Brewer, who hasn't coached since his firing. "Every (SEC) institution, when they have a problem, they go to Roy."

That hands-on reputation for managing crises is why Alabama fans refuse to let Kramer off the hook for their team's sanctions.

"All this started with Tennessee," Finebaum said of allegations from 1999 in which several tutors and instructors at Alabama's rival school came forward with concerns about academic fraud involving football players. "I mean, Tennessee has a remarkable record of having the NCAA come in and leave without much of a penalty."

The allegations led to more campus oversight of the academic support unit and tighter rules about permissible tutorial support, among other internal changes. But a school review declared that no NCAA rules had been violated. The NCAA later performed a cursory review, taking no action.

The NCAA largely let Tennessee probe itself, with Kramer providing guidance.

"They resolved that case in a very short-handed way," said Morgan, who was responsible for the NCAA's enforcement arm before leaving the organization in 1999. "I was surprised the NCAA didn't make them jump through more hoops than they did."

Alabama angst toward Kramer, who grew up in the Knoxville area, boiled over this spring with news reports of possible cash payments to former Tennessee quarterback Tee Martin. Wayne Rowe, then a Mobile Register sportswriter, said he was given $4,500 by a businesswoman from Martin's hometown and delivered it to Martin, who led Tennessee to the 1998 national championship. Martin denies receiving any money from the woman, who has been described as a Vols fan.

Tennessee officials say they investigated that situation around the same time they looked into the academic fraud issue and, similarly, found no NCAA violations. The SEC is reviewing the matter.

Robert Khayat, chancellor of the University of Mississippi, wants changes in the way the SEC processes allegations of NCAA rules infractions.

"The feeling around the conference is that when these concerns are exposed, there is not the kind of response that is expected," said Khayat, a former Ole Miss football player and the outgoing SEC president. "Schools believe they have accurate information about violations at other schools and nothing comes of it."

Presently, Kramer or one of his staff members interacts directly with the schools on investigations. Often, Kramer dispatches a private investigator on contract to gather information and report back to him. To bring more objectivity and independence to the process, Khayat has proposed the creation of a conference task force that would investigate allegations and punish schools operating outside the rules.

"The national perception is that we don't care about the rules," he said.

It's been a trying year for the SEC. In January, the NCAA infractions committee hit Kentucky's football program with sanctions that included the first bowl ban given to any Division I-A team since 1995; Alabama received a two-year ban days later. Each month since has brought more questions about the revenue sports of football or basketball -- whether it be allegations of booster payments at Arkansas, academic fraud at LSU, or the mysterious cash transfers at Tennessee.

"I don't want to criticize Roy -- he's been wonderful," Khayat said. "But you have to be concerned about (rules) enforcement when four or five schools" are on probation or under a cloud of allegations.

"We're voluntary members of this conference and the NCAA, so if we can't abide by the rules, shame on us."

Kramer says he isn't concerned how the rash of unflattering headlines of the past six months -- the final chapter in his career -- could affect his legacy.

"I can never be worried about perception," he said. "What you have to be sure about is that the conference, through its system, does what is right. And I feel very good about that. When issues have arisen, we've addressed them very positively, very significantly."

Conference at a crossroads
Periodically in the history of the NCAA, the gulf between the ideals and perceived realities of college sports become large enough in the public mind that the presidents of the member institutions, who ultimately are responsible for their athletics programs, rise up and declare that they are taking charge again. Now, it's the turn of the SEC chiefs.

They sounded an early salvo at the recent SEC annual meetings in May, voting to support a series of NCAA academic reform proposals despite the lobbying of the league's football coaches and one of Kramer's key lieutenants.

	“	We're not the NFL and NBA. We're universities. We're about higher education, and we need to be supportive of that. We've gotten away from that. ”
		— Vanderbilt athletics director Todd Turner

"The presidents are ready to be actively involved in (conference matters)," Khayat said. "The conference was in good hands with Roy, but at least eight of the presidents I've spoken to say they want to be more involved. We're going to meet more often. We're going to have more conversations with athletic directors and others."

One president, Vanderbilt's Gordon Gee, has even suggested tying the academic progress of athletes to the number of scholarships a team can offer, to raise low graduation rates in the revenue-producing sports.

"We're not the NFL and NBA," said Todd Turner, Vanderbilt's athletics director. "We're universities. We're about higher education, and we need to be supportive of that. We've gotten away from that."

But if the SEC is truly at a crossroads, that intersection is in the middle of an awfully nice resort -- not unlike the Sandestin, Fla., getaway where the annual SEC meetings were held. The presidents wrung their hands alongside some of the finest white-sand beaches on the state's panhandle at a swank golf-and-tennis playpen with all the extravagant touches, including ice in the urinals.

Due in part to Kramer's leadership, SEC schools can afford this luxury. Just as they can afford to continue to grow women's programs without making serious cuts to men's teams, thus avoiding the Title IX nightmare of many non-BCS schools. Revenue from conference championships, bowls and television contracts means Kramer is distributing a record $95 million this year to member schools, up from $16 million in his first year as commissioner. Conference money has helped solve a lot of thorny problems for the league presidents -- and create 83 national champions during the Kramer era.

SEC football is the great enabler. The conference has led the nation in attendance the past four years. It also has the most bowl tie-ins, with seven. CBS wants SEC games on its air so badly that each Saturday during the season the conference is guaranteed that one of its games will be shown nationally.

Football coaches wave at the unflattering headlines of recent months like they're mosquitos, annoying, but with short lives.

"What scandals?" South Carolina's Lou Holtz said.

"Two ladies have a problem with the rules, and it has nothing to do with NCAA regulations," said LSU's Nick Saban, of academic fraud allegations by university instructors at his school.

"We need a P.R. expert following us around to get the good news out," said Tennessee's Phil Fulmer.

Surrounded by a ring of media in the hotel hallway, Kramer is asked by a reporter from Houston about parallels between the SEC of today and the Southwest Conference of a decade ago. The SWC was dissolved after a period in which many of its schools had been tarred by NCAA rules problems and at a time when conferences were starting to take over broadcast contracts.

"This conference is not teetering on the brink," Kramer said. "The Southwest Conference did not break up because (of scandals). Television drove the re-arrangement of schools."

Few experts would doubt that analysis. But to Khayat, the seemingly impenetrable strength of the SEC juggernaut does not mean nothing is at stake for its member schools. He said he often sits in the university cafeteria, listening to students talk with pride about their achievements in school. He said he believes they don't want their teams to be known, rightly or wrongly, for winning at all costs.

"Oscar Wilde once said the cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing," he said. "It doesn't matter how we're doing financially if the (SEC's) values are not the same as those at our schools."

Tom Farrey is a Senior Writer with ESPN.com. He can be reached at tom.farrey@espn.com.