For those of you, like me, stumbling unarmed into the thick of recruiting season and wondering exactly what's up with Brian Butler, the "mentor" and gatekeeper to top-rated running back Bryce Brown, you're not alone. While his star player chills in Nebraska, two wildly different profiles on Butler showed up on major sites Thursday.

One is a rather fawning take from CBS' Dennis Dodd, who describes Butler (above, looking very Whitlock-ian at a camp) as completely above board, cozy with all the major coaches and recruiters but struggling to make ends meet. He's in the game purely to advance the cause of largely overlooked talent in and around Wichita in the same way that the Ginn Academy has done for hard-luck kids in Cleveland.

The other is from ESPN's Bruce Feldman, who caught up with Butler on the phone Thursday and subsequently painted a portrait that veers much closer to the one Dodd is clearly out to dispel, of Butler as an opportunist glomming onto local talent en route to the gravy train. Put them side-by-side, and it seems either Dodd is hopelessly moon-eyed, or Feldman isn't digging deep enough, or you should collide their opinions somewhere in the middle:

Accessibility by Phone.
• Feldman: Butler's phone cut out nine times in a 90-minute conversation with Feldman, even after Butler switched from a cell to a landline, which he explained was a result of switching providers.
• Dodd: "Pete Carroll and Lane Kiffin are on his speed dial."

Ostensible Motivation to get involved in recruiting.
• Feldman: Butler had an "epiphany" in 1999 that his mission was to "to help children 'get closer to God.'" Underlying implication: He was stuck managing a T-Mobile call center in Wichita.
• Dodd: Butler had an "epiphany" in 2000, prayed and wrote a three-page business plan. Underlying implication: He was angry at his own high school coach for failing to promote him and his brother to college coaches. He subsequently played one year at Fort Hays State before turning down a I-AA scholarship in North Carolina to attend Kansas State.

Business Model.
• Feldman: Convoluted. Butler turned his creation, Potential Players, from a business into a non-profit (Feldman kind of leaves this hanging as a point of contention, but Potential Players is registered as a nonprofit, albeit in Illinois, for some reason, not Kansas). He then started another for-profit business on the side, Life Training, which "focuses on aiding the recruiting process as well as physically training athletes." Whereas Potential Players "deals with more of the spiritual side," such as cramming 25 kids into a 15-seat van and taking them on a 20-state tour the past two summers. ("People get confused" between the two entities, Butler said).
• Dodd: Ambitious. Originally partnered with ex-Nebraska star DeAngelo Evans, Butler took his business plan to the parents of Bryce Brown and his brother Arthur (now completing his first year at Miami) when the brothers were just entering high school, and impressed them with a non-monetary contract that required the boys to "take leadership roles at school, sit at the front of the class, [and] attend weekly bible study" in return for free training. Since, he's brokered a deal with ESPNU to put one of the Browns' games on national television and drawn major coaches -- Carroll, Charlie Weis, Bob Stoops -- to watch prospects at his camps and clinics. No mention of nonprofit status or a second business interest.

Greediness.
• Feldman: Under the auspices of the business venture, "Life Training," Butler recently proposed charging ten bucks for insider updates on Brown's recruitment. He asks, "Why shouldn't I get paid?"
• Dodd: Wonders why shouldn't Butler get paid -- the recruiting sites are already making money off his information. Dodd also insists Butler will not consider accepting a bribe: "His intentions are spiritual. If the point has to be made again, he isn't making a killing." There are references piles of bills (which Dodd does not see) as Butler "wonder[s] how they're going to get paid."

Reputation in the Community.
• Feldman: Butler describes Wichita coaches as "territorial," and Feldman emphasizes that seven of the eight seniors in the Potential Players stable this year -- all but Bryce Brown -- come from outside of the Wichita public schools system, mostly from programs producing their first I-A athlete.
• Dodd: Bryce Brown's coach likes Butler (though he doubts his transformative skills as a trainer), as does national recruiting guru Tom Lemming. The kids in the program work out at a local gym owned by former Kansas State star and NFL-er Mark Simoneau and his brother.

General Ambiance.
• Feldman: "The lines are getting really blurred here."
• Dodd: "Prior to picking Miami [in 2007], Arthur fasted for a week along with Butler, Bryce and Arthur Sr., searching for 'clarification.' They all subsisted on water, juice and tomato soup. At the end of the week, they all, independently, had picked the Hurricanes."

Dodd loves the guy. Feldman, without saying so outright -- and possibly without even meaning to -- paints Butler as a sketchy, disorganized hanger-on. In fact, the only aspect of Feldman's post that made me hesitate at all to label Butler a creepy parasite is the fact the Potential Players existed for a few years before he recruited Brown and his older brother, Arthur (who just finished his first year at Miami), into the fold.

Dodd's account effectively counters those cynical instincts. There appears to be quite a bit of legitimate football-related activity going on; this is by no means an ex-con bribing Reggie Bush to become the first client in his new "agency." On that note, there's no indication in either story that Butler has any ambition at all to seek residual green should either Brown brother or any of his other protegés break into the big time -- although I guess we'll really only be able to cross that bridge when we come to it. If Bryce Brown fulfills his potential and Butler is still putting teenaged Kansans through agility drills, I think it will be fair to say he's legit.