His survival story can leave you rooting for imperfection

SAN FRANCISCO -- He is an imperfect man. A man shadowed by scandal, tragedy and addiction.

Tonight, I will pull for him -- for his University of San Francisco Dons basketball team in its game at Pepperdine.

It’s nothing against Pepperdine. It’s just that I like fighters, people who bounce back from mistakes and war with their demons. The imperfect. The humbled. That’s Eddie Sutton.

That will be him on the sidelines in Malibu tonight. He is 71 now, more worn than we remember, silver haired, hunched by arthritis and hard living. He walks and talks slowly, but his basketball mind is still strong and fast.

Yes, Eddie Sutton, coaching USF.

Since the 1960s, Sutton has been a big-time, bright-lights coach, most notably at Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma State.

A win tonight would give him 800 victories. Only seven other men have reached that milestone. Some say he needs that many to solidify his legacy, some say he’s coming back in a cynical chase for 800. Let’s suspend cynicism for now and take a look at the man. His has been a pockmarked, potholed journey.

He has all of those wins, all those postseason games and runs deep into the NCAA tournament. But along the way he became an alcoholic. And along the way, at Kentucky in 1989, he was forced to resign when his team got tangled in a scandal involving an alleged payment to a high-profile recruit, among other problems.

Soon, of course, he was at it again, this time coaching his alma mater, Oklahoma State. He told anyone who would listen that he was sober. A no-guff coach, hardened by childhood poverty, Sutton turned a losing team into another powerhouse. Just as he’d been before, he was beloved by fans for his country charm and winning.

Then came a winter’s night in 2001, when a plane carrying part of his team crashed in a Colorado field. There were 10 on that plane. Everyone died.

As he and I sat in the stands at the low-slung USF gymnasium recently, he said that the scar from that night would always be fresh. He shook his head, remembering.

Maybe because of that scar, and certainly because of the pain he had long felt from a bone disease, Sutton again turned to alcohol. He’d always loved how drinking made him feel. “Like a phantom,” he said. As if he could disappear and do anything.

He’d been in treatment when he was at Kentucky. He told me it had worked. He said he also had been a regular at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. But in Stillwater, Okla., he had let his guard down. “I thought I could control it,” he said, grimacing. “I couldn’t.”

He found that out on another winter’s night, this one in 2006. Reaching to touch his hips and back, Sutton explained that he’d long been racked by back pain and the bone disease. Afraid he’d gain a hunger for painkillers, doctors never let him take anything more than aspirin for the pain. So one day he bought a bottle of bourbon, drank it, got in his white Dodge Durango, took off wildly down the highway, and crashed. He was lucky nobody was killed, lucky to come away with only bruises and scratches.

“What a stupid mistake,” he said, looking away. “I’d had a few slips over the years, yes, but this . . . this was just a dumb-assed move.”

Again embarrassed and publicly shamed -- and tantalizingly close, at 798 wins, to an epic milestone, Sutton resigned.

That was two years ago.

Now, suddenly, despite the fact nobody expected him to ever lead a team again, we find Eddie Sutton coaching USF, a team with little talent and hope. This is where you go for redemption? Arkansas, Kentucky and Oklahoma State competed for NCAA titles and played in packed arenas on national TV. For USF, all of that is but a dream.

Though he’d never seen the USF campus, let alone its team, Sutton accepted a midseason offer as a fill-in. He met his team for the first time the day after Christmas. They were a motley bunch with a 4-8 record, a point guard who ran up court as if he were on a playground, a center who struggled to make layups, nothing in the way of reserves.

But Sutton was just happy to be back. He told me how he had missed the sweat and heartache, the coaches and kids. In San Francisco, even though it was midseason, he pushed the team through twice-daily practices. Defense, passing, fundamentals, boot camp.

“They thought I was nuts,” Sutton said, in his low twang. “I’ve always been the demanding type. Guess they weren’t quite used to it.”

Sutton told me this would be his last season coaching. He certainly won’t return to USF next year. He has important things to return to. There’s family, his wife, their kids and grandkids. Of course, there’s his addiction.

“I don’t drink anymore,” he said. “I can’t, because I am just not sure that if I took one drink I would not want more. It’ll always be like that.”

The car crash taught Sutton that he could never skimp on seeking support from other addicts, and that he needed to give more of himself. He told me about a handful of young addicts he speaks with regularly. He’s now their guide. Then there’s the sprawling rehab center he is working to have built on the Oklahoma State campus.

“That really is where my energies go now,” he said. “I’ve just got to get back to make sure that facility gets done.”

Until then, he’s a coach seeking a win that will etch his name in record books. His USF team is 1-7 since he took over. Nine games remain in the regular season.

What about the rest of the season, about whether he would ever reach 800? I began asking if he came back only for that.

“No, no,” he said, cutting me off. “It’s really not about the wins as much as about leaving the right way. You just hate to finish something the way I finished. It’s important that I leave with my head up.”

I like that. I’m not convinced that getting to 800 isn’t more of a motivation than he will admit. But an important measure of ourselves is how we dust off after failure and embarrassment. So tonight, because he is trying to bounce back and finish right, I will pull for Eddie Sutton.

--

Kurt Streeter can be reached at kurt.streeter@latimes.com.

To read previous columns by Streeter, go to latimes.com/streeter.