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GREENSBORO -- Otis Yelverton says he's not a bad guy, just someone who wants to help kids get an education. And a lot of people back him up on that.

And a lot of other people don't.

He is, by all accounts, a very good coach. He is, by other accounts, a very good street agent. Yelverton says he's no longer concerned what people think of him. He's only concerned with the well-being of those kids and their families who trust him.

Yelverton is a former assistant football coach at Eastern, Page, Grimsley and Northern high schools in Guilford County. His county contract was not renewed after the athletics scandal at Northern last year. Yelverton is now the athletics director, his full-time job, at Oak Ridge Military Academy.

He's something of a lightning rod for the little understood and sometimes messy business of getting high school athletes into colleges. He's something of a pariah in the tight-knit coaching community in Guilford County. But to the families of more than 130 kids he says he's helped get college scholarships in the past decade, he's something of a miracle worker.

Among those are the families of four Guilford County high school football players who recently signed papers to attend the University of California at Berkeley, a decision that enraged coaches and recruiters at schools like Alabama and Clemson and has even spawned message-board death threats from fans of spurned schools.

"I don't care about that stuff," Yelverton said.

The situation that caused all the uproar was over the recruitment of some of the best football players we've seen here in Greensboro in many years. Keenan Allen, a defensive back who also played wide receiver in his years at Grimsley and Northern, verbally committed to play football at Alabama in late summer. But in the interim, other schools stayed interested in him, along with his brother and two of his friends.

A chain of events that affected college programs from Buffalo to Oregon resulted in all four of the players signing with California and convinced many coaches in the area to roll their eyes. Yelverton, who said he serves as a "mentor" to all four of the kids, said he doesn't care what people's reactions were.

"Contrary to what people like to say, it ain't about me," Yelverton said. "It's about the kids and giving them an opportunity to experience something different than going to a school in North Carolina."

Yelverton helped pay for trips to California for the group of young men, also arranging trips to Oregon, Washington and Alabama. He's been doing this for years for area high school players, building a reputation here and across the country as a man who can connect recruiters with young men who might not otherwise have an opportunity to go to college outside the state.

"Coach O is a great guy with a great big heart," Remene Alston said. "I wouldn't want his credit card bill."

Alston's son, Remene Alston Jr., is at Oregon because of Yelverton, and the family swears by him.

"What he has done for my kid and for my family is phenomenal," Alston said. "He's in it for the kids and the families. He gets a bad rap from other coaches around here, but that's a very, very unfair assessment. The other coaches are, quite frankly, jealous of him."

Those coaches weren't interested in talking on the record about Yelverton. Several others didn't return calls. Rumors fly that he's only in it for himself or that he's getting a job in California out of the deal or that the NCAA is involved.

"I'm getting nothing out of this," Yelverton said. "I'm happy where I am. We're doing good things at Oak Ridge. I just want to put all this other stuff behind me."

A spokesman for the University of California system said there's a hiring freeze in California. A spokesman for the NCAA said the organization doesn't comment on ongoing investigations.

"For our enforcement staff to look into something like that, the school would have to be involved," NCAA spokesman Stacey Osburn said. "There would have to something suggesting the student-athlete received extra benefits or preferential treatment. If their eligibility had been impacted, we would look into it."

None of that has surfaced. What has surfaced is that Yelverton seems to be doing the work that a lot of coaches should be doing, compiling game video and highlight packages and the personal information that college programs base their decisions on. He says he does it out of his own pocket, connecting the kids and their families with the college recruiters who canvass the country looking for players to stock their programs.

Recruiting high school kids to play college football is big-time these days, and as one local high school coach said, this latest episode is an indication that big-time football has finally come to North Carolina.

"Not college," he said. "Big-time high school football."

He didn't want his name in the paper. Lots of people don't want their names in the paper when it comes to this story.

Yelverton himself isn't too concerned about that.

"I don't care what people say," he said. "I only care about these kids and their families. I'm not some handler or street agent, which is a term people like to use. The families come to me, not the other way around."

Football recruiting can be a dirty business, and it can be an expensive mess to those willing to do the costly and sometimes messy work. Yelverton is willing to do that. He says he does it for the kids. He says he does it with his own money. And he says he doesn't care what anyone else thinks about it.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com