The long journey of personal redemption for Morgan State basketball coach Todd Bozeman, which culminates this week when he leads the Bears to the first Division I NCAA tournament berth in school history, has been a decade in the making.
It's a journey that took him to Africa to teach basketball to teenagers who walked miles barefoot just to attend his clinics. It's a journey that saw him take a job as a drug sales representative for Pfizer because basketball coaching could no longer pay the bills. It's a journey that humbled him, saddened him and frustrated him. He lost his father to cancer along the way, and it almost broke him.
But through it all - while waiting for NCAA sanctions against him to expire, sanctions imposed after he admitted paying the family of a recruit as University of California coach from 1993 to 1996 - he never doubted that he'd get another chance to be a college coach again.
"I always believed it would happen," Bozeman said. "I never wavered on that. I just didn't know when. I was just determined to stay the course and ride it out."
Morgan State, desperately needing a savior, gave him that chance in 2006, putting him in charge of a team that had not posted a winning season since 1988. It took three seasons for the 45-year-old coach to instill discipline and inject excitement into the basketball program. When his team won the Mid-Eastern Atlantic Conference tournament last week, earning a No. 15 seed in the NCAA tournament and a first-round game tomorrow against the No. 2 seed Oklahoma Sooners, he didn't try to hide his emotions. He cried openly on the court.
He couldn't help but feel, after all this time, that some of his past sins had finally been cleansed. He only wished that his father, Ira, had lived to share the moment with him.
"I thought of him as the clock was ticking down," said Bozeman, whose father died of lung cancer in 2006. "I just really wished he was there, and I really felt bad that I wasn't able to share that with him, because that was my goal all along when I was out. I just kept envisioning that moment. He always said that he thought I would get back [to the NCAA tournament]. I thought of him immediately."
It was vindication for Bozeman and confirmation of Morgan State's faith in him.
Dr. Earl S. Richardson, president of Morgan State, said he was deeply involved in the recruiting and vetting of Bozeman because of the sanctions, and called him a "perfect match" for the school.
