Editor's note: Readers should be aware that this story contains sexually graphic content.
Memphis, Tennessee (CNN) -- Police in Tennessee and the Amateur Athletic Union have launched separate investigations after two former basketball players alleged that the leader of a youth sports organization molested them during the 1980s when they were boys.
The former players were interviewed by the ESPN show "Outside the Lines" for a story broadcast Sunday.
They allege that Robert "Bobby" Dodd sexually abused them in hotel rooms during tournaments when they were 12 to 16 years old.
CNN could not reach Dodd, 63, for comment. ESPN said it also had been unable to reach him.
The former players say the alleged incidents occurred when Dodd was a YMCA director in the 1980s. Calls placed Saturday to the Memphis YMCA were not immediately returned.
But a public relations firm representing the AAU outlined Saturday the timeline of events that led to Dodd's dismissal last month, noting that the AAU has opened an independent investigation and contacted local law enforcement in Memphis, Tennessee.
Dodd has been diagnosed with colon cancer and will not return as president and chief executive officer of the youth organization, the statement said.
Louis Stout, who replaces Dodd as acting AAU president, said the organization has provided the Memphis Police Department "with the limited information we have up to this point" and begun to review such safeguards as screening and training for staff and volunteers.
"While we believe our network of programs has significant safeguards in place, we will never be complacent about doing all we can to protect the young people in our programs," he said.
Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong said, "Although this case has its challenges due to the amount of time that has passed, it will be thoroughly examined; and if the investigation reveals the law was violated, the person responsible will be held accountable."
The allegations were made amid child sex scandals at Penn State and Syracuse universities; both men told ESPN that the publicity from the scandals prompted them to act.
One of Dodd's accusers, identified by ESPN as Ralph West, said he was 14 at the time of the alleged abuse. West said he was on a basketball team run by Dodd, who he said would sometimes slip into his hotel room. He recalled one incident to the network.
"Must have been 3 in the morning. I was dead asleep and I don't remember anything but waking up and he has his, he's trying to put his hand in my boxer shorts. And I jumped up straight out of the bed and he's not there, but he's laying on the floor next to me down by the bed. And of course I was freaked out," West told ESPN.
Asked how Dodd could have entered the hotel room, West said, "He had a key. He always somehow had a key to whatever room I was in."
West said he tried to find ways to keep Dodd out of his hotel room when they were at out-of-town basketball tournaments.
"I was afraid to even fall asleep when he was around. And it got to where I would barricade my, if I had a hotel room, I would take the table and chairs and I'd block it all against the door," West told ESPN. "And it got to where he couldn't assault me, but he would push his way in the room and then end up, I'd see, I wouldn't see him, I would hear him, he'd lay at the floor of the bed masturbating. And you just lay there horrified. But you don't know what to do. What, are you going to blow the lid off of this at 14 years? All you want to do is pretend it didn't happen and not address it at all. You want to hide and bury it."
Asked what evidence he has, West said, "I'm the evidence. I'm not trying to gain anything out of it. It's not like, 'Oh, wow, here, let me go on national TV and humiliate myself and possibly embarrass my family and stuff so I can tell everybody this deep, dark secret that I've had.' The guy shouldn't be around kids any more."
West said Dodd abused him or tried to abuse him six times.
West showed ESPN an e-mail he said he sent to the AAU's compliance department on November 9 accusing Dodd of being a pedophile, the network reported on its website. He said he got no response to the e-mail.
But the head of the Florida-based media relations firm hired by AAU to manage the crisis offered a detailed account of how the organization learned about and then responded to the accusations.
The AAU headquarters in Orlando, Florida, began to receive "brief, cryptic, anonymous e-mails on November 7, 8 and 9 that alleged, in very general ways, acts of child sexual abuse by Bobby Dodd," said Ron Sachs of the Florida-based Ron Sachs Communications.
"One of them referenced the year 1984 with nothing further, another referenced the 1970s," he said.
Those messages were sent to AAU's compliance office and to the organization's general counsel, Sachs said.
After business hours on November 9, the AAU office received similar anonymous, brief messages on its telephone answering machine that were retrieved the following day by staff members, he said.
AAU officers were told of the allegations on November 11, and flew to Orlando to meet at AAU offices with Dodd on November 14, Sachs said.
"Dodd informed the officers that he had also received calls making these kinds of general allegations during the same time period of the first half of November," Sachs said. "During the meeting on the 14th, he repeatedly denied the allegations to the officers."
He was then told "to take leave from the office and his post and not to return to the office and, in fact, he has not returned since."
The officers initiated an internal investigation and hired a private investigator to whom they turned over the accusatory phone messages and e-mails, Sachs said.
He described the messages as "brief, cryptic and anonymous." The phone messages did not leave call-back numbers and the e-mails were not in the name of a person, he said.
"What the organization did was take very seriously the allegation, general as it was, by acting directly through their compliance office, general counsel and engaging a private investigator," Sachs said.
The other accuser, whom ESPN did not identify, said Dodd gave him alcohol before taking him to a bedroom and touching him inappropriately.
"We were at his house and he provided us with some alcohol and, looking back on it now, I know for a fact that he put something in my, my drink that night, because the last thing that I can really remember was him carrying me into his bedroom and I can remember him, you know, touching me in ways that I, I didn't uh, I didn't want another man touching me," the accuser said.
The man said he called Dodd on Nov ember 11 and confronted him. Dodd, he said, then apologized for the alleged abuse. The network said it examined the man's phone records and verified an eight-minute phone call to Dodd's number.
Both men said they had never reported the alleged incidents to police and had only recently told their families, ESPN said.
About the same time that the accusations were unfolding, Dodd learned that he had colon cancer and underwent surgery, Sachs said.
On Friday, December 9, the AAU notified the Memphis Police Department about the allegations and offered to cooperate with any investigation, Sachs said.
"It is my understanding that, until that time, the Memphis police had not been contacted by any complainant" about the allegations, he said.
The AAU has directed its private investigator to stand down "for the time being" in order not to interfere with any law enforcement investigation of the matter, he said.
But it is undertaking its own investigation into the matter by reviewing its policies, procedures and protocols, he said.
The AAU has 80,000 adult volunteers involved in coaching and working with hundreds of thousands of young people, he said.
CNN's Joe Sutton, Meridith Edwards, George Howell and Tom Watkins contributed to this report.
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