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."