Quitting Wasn’t His Last Call

The walls are nearly bare in Larry Eustachy’s modest office on the Southern Mississippi campus.

There’s no plaque proclaiming his selection as Associated Press college basketball coach of the year in 2000. No strands from the nets his teams at Iowa State cut down after winning Big 12 championships in 2000 and ’01. No pictures of Eustachy in his previous basketball life, posing with Larry Brown, John Lucas or any of the other big-name basketball figures with whom he formed friendships.

Instead, the walls, with only a picture of former Southern Miss coach Lee Floyd, reflect the clean slate before him as Eustachy resumes his career at a smaller school, where the expectations -- and the money -- are lower. In May 2003, Eustachy resigned from Iowa State after the Des Moines Register published photos of him drinking with college students at a party, being kissed by and, in turn, kissing young women on the cheek.

Eustachy, who was subsequently divorced by his wife, Stacy, admitted publicly after the photos had run that he was an alcoholic. He said that he would drink before boarding planes because of his fear of flying, and before postgame news conferences because of anxiety over speaking. He never drank before or during games, he said, but he almost always did so afterward.

So why is this man smiling so broadly as he looks around his new surroundings?

“My life’s never been better. It really hasn’t,” says the 48-year-old Eustachy, who quit drinking April 23, 2003 -- the date is as meaningful to him as his birthday -- and is in a 12-step program.

“When you live the life of an alcoholic, what is abnormal to others is normal to you. Going through a whole transformation and being sober for 20 months, I see just how abnormal my life was. I missed out on a lot of things.

“It’s refreshing to see how my life has changed. I’ve become more spiritual. I attend three to five meetings a week on my program and kind of have my own meetings because I read a lot on the subject and listen to tapes.”

As he speaks, Eustachy sips on a diet soft drink. He estimates that he consumes 15 of them a day.

“When you are an alcoholic,” he says, “you are constantly taking, taking, taking. Now, I’m giving back.

“For one thing, I’m a better son. I’ve seen my parents and talked to them on the phone more in the last year than I had in the five years before that. I went by their house in Arcadia on several occasions while on recruiting trips, but I always kept going because there was still a light on at my favorite bar in Newport Beach.”

Eustachy’s parents, who now live in San Clemente, are grateful for the transformation.

“He’s a completely changed guy,” said his father, George. “So different, it’s unbelievable. He spends more time with the family. He’s a poster boy for the 12-step program. Before, he always seemed to have a lot of anxiety.”

It was while he was still living at home and attending Arcadia High that Eustachy first began the addiction that would consume him for 30 years.

“In college,” he says, “there was rarely a day when I didn’t go out with the fellows and drink at night. It was always beer.”

After playing basketball in high school and at Citrus College, Eustachy graduated from Long Beach State, then returned to Citrus to begin his coaching career in 1979. He went on from there to assistant jobs at Mississippi State, Idaho, Utah and Ball State before getting his first head-coaching position at Idaho. After three seasons there and five at Utah State, Eustachy landed at Iowa State in 1998. His 1999-2000 club reached the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament.

It wasn’t until the 2001-02 season that he experienced his first losing record (12-19), but Eustachy brought the Cyclones back to the plus side the following season with a 17-14 mark.

Through it all, highs and lows, the one constant was his drinking.

“But I was functional, big time,” Eustachy says. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some great, great times drinking. I only drank when the day was over, but it was beginning to get in my way, in terms of staying out too late and not being able to get up in the morning.”

Early in 2003, he said, Stacy found him drunk in the kitchen one night and told him he might have a problem.

“That was the only time in my whole life anyone had ever said that to me. Ever,” Eustachy says. “Maybe others just didn’t have the strength to tell me.”

Said George Eustachy, “We didn’t view it as a problem, didn’t see him as an alcoholic. Larry was basically just a beer drinker. I never saw him drink hard liquor. It was almost like a fraternity type of drinking.”

Nevertheless, plagued by general anxiety, Eustachy was ready to heed his wife’s words.

“I would go to have three beers,” he says, “and I would wind up having seven. That was kind of telling me something. Maybe there was something there.”

He went to see a physician, who told him, “I was an alcoholic myself at one time and I can safely say you are too.”

Eustachy began to attend meetings of a 12-step program, but had trouble relating to those around him.

“ ‘How can that be me?’ I wondered,” Eustachy says. “I was national coach of the year, back-to-back Big 12 championships. I never drank in front of my players. Never, ever, did I do that. That was my whole measuring stick. I was never late, never missed a practice. So how on earth could I have a drinking problem? There’s no way.

“I was not underneath a bridge with a bottle of wine in a brown bag. I’m a beer drinker. I played hard. I worked hard. I was John Wayne. That’s who I was.”

Play hard. Work hard. Fall hard.

In April 2003, the Des Moines Register published the damaging photos, taken in Columbia, Mo., after an Iowa State loss on Jan. 22.

According to the paper, a student also accused Eustachy of having become belligerent at the party.

In an editorial, the paper said, “It’s pathetic, really. And sad. A 47-year-old man wallowing in the youthful days of college.”

Eustachy’s response?

“There are probably two to three hundred pictures of me kissing people at events,” he says. “I kissed a guy on the cheek who was dressed as a leprechaun at a Halloween party, but nobody published that. If I had been kissing ladies on the cheek at an old-age home, I would have been called a hero.”

Eustachy said he was drinking in a bar on the infamous night and was headed for a cab to go back to his hotel when he was invited by a Missouri basketball player to have a few more drinks at a neighboring apartment.

“I drank a few beers and had a few pictures taken,” Eustachy says. “It was something I had done at a million Cyclone outings. No crime was done, but, in hindsight, it was ridiculous. They say when you take your first drink, you stop maturing. You stay at that age. So I was 47 and still really an 11th grader in terms of maturity.”

Events moved quickly.

“I’m sure he is very embarrassed, as he should be,” Tom Vilsack, Iowa’s governor, told Associated Press at the time. “I’m sure he feels he has let a lot of people down, and he has. He’s going to have to deal with that.”

A week after the pictures appeared, with pressure from school officials mounting, Eustachy resigned. With eight years remaining on a 10-year deal that paid him $1.1 million a season, Eustachy was given $960,000 to sever his relationship with the university.

“It’s crazy.” Eustachy says. “I lived in morbid fear of losing my $1.1-million job, so I drank at night to forget. You know, we drink to forget. Well, it ended up costing me my job.”

Said George Eustachy, “The administration was just looking for a way to get rid of Larry. To me, it was a very minor thing.”

His son sought solace with his closest friend, former Iowa State and Chicago Bull coach Tim Floyd, who now lives in New Orleans. Floyd hooked up Eustachy with people in a 12-step program, then later thought Eustachy and Southern Miss would be a perfect fit. James Green, the previous coach, had resigned before the final game of his eighth season with the Golden Eagles. His last squad finished 13-15.

Floyd got Richard Giannini, Southern Mississippi’s athletic director, in contact with Eustachy and the two reached an agreement within a few days on a four-year contract paying $230,000 annually with $500,000 in incentives.

“He said all the right things in the interview,” Giannini said. “I didn’t have to ask about the alcoholism. He brought it up. I’ve had alcoholism in my family, so I know about it and I know he’s following a great program.”

Eustachy’s major concern was leaving behind in Iowa his two sons, Hayden, 12, and Evan, 10. But once he worked out a visitation schedule with his ex-wife, he was ready to go.

So Eustachy went to Southern Miss, a school whose biggest basketball accomplishment was winning the NIT in 1987, whose most famous NBA player was Clarence Weatherspoon, a school that hasn’t had a winning record in three seasons.

But Floyd says what others might see as a step down is viewed by Eustachy as a step forward.

“He’s never been an ego guy,” Floyd said. “He’s about as regular a guy as you will ever meet. I’m happy for Larry. People in Hattiesburg have embraced him. The administration loves the guy. He’s not going to get fired for losing games. The guy wins.

“He’s not going to get fired for lack of self-control. He could be there as long as he wants to be. He understands what’s at stake. I’m not talking about basketball. I’m talking about his life. He feels like he’s getting the word across to alcoholics, taking pride in helping other people. Southern Miss is getting a guy at the top of his game. He’s hungry and I think he finally gets it.”

The Golden Eagles have been on their game so far this season, starting 7-2.

“The reason I came here was to play for someone with the stature of Coach Eustachy,” said junior guard Solomon Brown, whose hometown is Anaheim. “This is a great opportunity. I respect Coach Eustachy as much as I respect anybody in this world. He’s a man. He held himself responsible for what he did. When he talks, players stare at him because you know one sentence from someone with his experience could change your whole game.”

After working with the team for seven weeks in preseason practice, Eustachy was beaming.

“Those seven weeks used to be murder because I sweated every little thing,” he said. “This time, the seven weeks went by like seven days. I just flew back from a trip with the team, watching game film on a little video machine. I used to fly separately from the players so I could drink.

“My idea of retirement was sitting on a barstool down on the beach drinking. You see those guys sitting there, having a heck of a time telling the same story 400 times to somebody who doesn’t want to hear it. They just think they are the cat’s meow.

“I don’t want to sit on the beach anymore. I want to coach for a long time.”