Background Information
Eric Ramsey was born in the Birmingham suburb of Homewood, Alabama in 1967. He was signed by Auburn in the signing class of 1986 but was redshirted for the 1987 football season that culminated in Auburn's second SEC championship in five years. In 1989, he became a starter, and in 1990, he was a star defensive back on an Auburn team that went as high as number three in the nation. He was drafted in the tenth round of the 1991 NFL draft by the Kansas City Chiefs but was cut before training camp ended. In June 1991, the Montgomery-Advertiser newspaper printed a portion of an essay Ramsey wrote for his Sociology class. The article accused Auburn's football coaches of being "condescending" towards blacks and having a slave master mentality.
Another contributing factor to the scandal is believed to be the conflict within the Ramsey family. Former Auburn linebacker Aundray Bruce was married to Ramsey's wife's sister, making them brothers-in-law. Bruce was the overall number one pick in the 1988 NFL Draft by the Atlanta Falcons and had received a substantial signing bonus that instantly made him a rich man. Envy of the success of Bruce was later considered one of the complicating factors as the story was told in "The Uncivil War," a history of the Iron Bowl from 1981 to 1994 written by Scott Brown and Will Collier.
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