TAMPA, Fla. — Kenneth M. Good wore a jogging suit the night he clinched one of the biggest land deals of his high-flying career.

It was January, 1985, and Good was racing in fast times.

The savings and loan money machines were in overdrive, real estate was hot, and Florida swarmed with speculators who had cash or knew how to get it.

Good swaggered into town from Denver and pledged nearly $38 million cash for 5,400 acres of Spanish moss-draped woodlands north of Tampa. Plans for fine homes, offices and a highbrow country club were envisioned.

Five years later, the unfinished Tampa Palms development is controlled by two banks and up for sale, another victim of a faltering real estate market. Good says his net worth has plummeted from $100 million into the red.

Congressional investigators have grilled Good about links to the failed Silverado Banking, Savings & Loan Assn. of Denver and a scandal that has ensnared President Bush's son Neil.

"I feel no shame," the 45-year-old Good told the House Banking Committee recently. "Shame implies guilt. I think I was as much a victim of the markets as anyone else."

The saga of Ken Good is a microcosm of the S&L crisis: risky ventures, free-spending splendor, collapse.

Deeply indebted to Silverado and others, Good managed to convince the financially troubled owners of the Tampa site that he was their savior.

People familiar with the negotiating session said Good attended the final signing in a jogging suit, a symbolic reflection of his go-go personality. But ultimately, he came up with less than half the $38 million he promised. Site owners agreed to let him finance the rest.

He then used Tampa Palms as collateral for loans and a $70-million high-risk "junk bond" issue to finance other ventures, including the $250 million debt-financed takeover of Gulfstream Land & Development Corp, one of Florida's major builders.

Good looked like the best thing that ever happened to Tampa until his mounting debts and the slowing real estate market toppled his empire.

"What can you say? It's the story of the last couple years," said James Apthorp, a former Gulfstream executive kept on as consultant at Tampa Palms after foreclosure.

Good, a Methodist minister's son raised in a Kansas farm town, followed prosperity around the nation with what acquaintances call a barnstormer's zeal.