Memphis, Tennessee (CNN) -- The leader of a Memphis-based YMCA group said he felt "gut-punched" by a televised report in which two men alleged a former coach with that organization had sexually abused them as boys.





Keith Johnson, the president and CEO of the YMCA of Memphis and the Mid-South, said he first heard of the allegations against Robert "Bobby" Dodd while watching ESPN's "Outside the Lines" program on Sunday.





He said the sports network didn't contact him in advance of the piece. As of Monday, several days after Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong announced his department would investigate the claims against Dodd, Johnson said that law enforcement had not touched base with his YMCA organization.





In the ESPN report, Dodd's accusers said he sexually abused them in hotel rooms during tournaments when they were 12 to 16 years old.





CNN has not been able to reach Dodd, 63, for comment on the allegations. ESPN said it also had been unable to reach him.





On Monday afternoon, Memphis police Deputy Chief Dave Martello said the investigators' options are limited given that no one has filed a formal complaint against Dodd.





"A person is going to have to actually come to the police and report this," Martello told reporters. "The fact they go on TV and make these accusations is not notifying the authorities."





Martello said police are still trying to determine "where (the alleged crimes) happened, when they happened and who was involved." But if a person doesn't offer details directly to police, there are only "going to be a lot of baby steps," he said.





Dodd, who is not a direct relative of the late former Georgia Tech football coach of the same name, was a basketball coach affiliated with the Memphis YMCA in the 1980s, Johnson confirmed. Two now grown men alleged in the ESPN report that Dodd abused them during that time.





The allegations were made amid child sex scandals at Penn State and Syracuse universities and The Citadel. Both men accusing Dodd told ESPN the publicity from the scandals prompted them to act.





The YMCA said Dodd left in 1992 "to pursue AAU sports full-time," including founding an organization called the YOMCA, which stands for Youth of Memphis Competitive Association and is unrelated to the YMCA. He eventually became president and CEO of the Amateur Athletic Union, a position he held until his dismissal on November 14.





Johnson came to Memphis as head of the Fogelman Downtown YMCA a year after Dodd left. In his time with the organization, including over the last decade as an executive for the regional YMCA, Johnson said he had never heard complaints regarding the former coach.





Martello said that Memphis police began looking into the case after the AAU gave them information last Friday. AAU spokesman Ron Sachs had also said that his organization kick-started the child sex abuse criminal probe -- although the group has varied as to whether it claims to have contacted authorities last Thursday or Friday -- telling CNN that the organization provided the identities of three of Dodd's accusers, including not brought up in the ESPN report.





This disclosure followed a nearly monthlong investigation ordered by the AAU, Sachs said Sunday.





The AAU got "cryptic, brief" e-mails, signed only as "shrimp breath," on November 7, 8 and 9 that "alleged, in a very general way, that Bobby Dodd engaged in child sexual abuse," Sachs said. On November 9, the organization got two brief voice-mails along the same lines. There was no name or contact information left in either case.





Those messages were sent to the AAU's compliance and general counsel office, and AAU officers were notified on November 11. The board members, several of whom flew into Orlando, convened the next Monday, November 14, "to confront then-President Bobby Dodd," said Sachs.





In that meeting, Dodd said he had gotten similar phone messages and said he was innocent, according to Sachs, who said he had spoken with several AAU officers who
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