"He has turned it around much quicker than most of us thought could be done," Richardson said. "I saw someone who was truly sorry. One, he was genuinely committed to young people and wanted to make a difference in young people's lives. I talked with him extensively, and was persuaded that he was worth taking a chance on. Two, that if we did take the chance, it was one of those things we would not have to regret. If he failed, it would not be for lack of trying."
Had Bozeman made different choices more than a decade ago after he became one of the youngest coaches in college basketball at age 29, it's likely that making it to the NCAA tournament wouldn't feel like such a monumental accomplishment. In 1993, when Bozeman steered a Cal Bears team led by freshman point guard Jason Kidd into the Sweet 16, it looked like he and his program were going to be regular fixtures in the NCAA postseason.
But Bozeman's fairy tale in Berkeley, Calif., unraveled quickly after it surfaced that he'd paid $30,000 over two years to the family of recruit Jelani Gardner. The NCAA slapped him with an eight-year show-cause ban, one of the harshest penalties the governing body had handed down. Any school that wanted to hire Bozeman needed to go before the NCAA infractions committee and get its approval. A school would have to argue on Bozeman's behalf, and "show cause and reason" why Bozeman's past transgressions should be forgiven.
Bozeman apologized, but no school was willing to fight for him and take a chance that he'd learned his lesson. He did his best to stay busy. He coached his son's basketball team. He went to his daughter's dance recitals. He took a job as an NBA scout for the Toronto Raptors in 1998, and did that until 2001. He traveled to Nigeria to help conduct a basketball clinic, an experience that would stay with him forever.
Eventually he even took a sales job at Pfizer Inc., the pharmaceutical company. But he couldn't walk away from basketball completely.
He longed to be a college coach again, to mold skinny teenagers into grown men. So when Morgan State wanted to know if he was interested in completely overhauling its program, he jumped at the chance.
The first rules Bozeman put in place at Morgan were simple: No player was allowed to wear a hat or a hood indoors. Their pants could not hang down below their waist. During practice and during games, everyone would wear the exact same shoes. Every player would attend study hall, or they would have to run stairs at 5 a.m. The discipline was simple, meant to teach life lessons as much as basketball, and it was effective.
