On this episode of Our American Stories, next we have a story about one of the biggest scandals in college basketball history and one of its biggest turnarounds. Here to tell the story is one of the members of that Baylor basketball team, Matt Sayman, author of The Leftovers: Baylor, Betrayal, and Beyond.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
They show where America is the star and the American people.
To subscribe to our podcasts, go to the iHeartRadio app
or wherever you get your podcasts. Up next to story
about one of the biggest scandals in college basketball history,
(00:30):
along with one of its biggest turnarounds.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
My name's Matt Samon and I'm the head boys basketball
coach at Grapevine Faith Christian School right outside of DFW
Dallas Fort Worth. And then that's what I do full time.
But what I get to tell my players about is
a story that a lot of them haven't heard before,
but their parents are probably familiar with. Or I remember
(00:58):
at some point hearing about what happened with Baylor basketball
in the early two thousands. And one of my dreams
growing up was to be a Division one basketball player,
but I never dreamt of being part of one of
the largest scandals or tragedies in college basketball history. And
going into my senior year down in Waco, that's exactly
(01:20):
where I found myself. But before that, you kind of
have to start back at how did basketball become so
important to me? So I grew up in eastern Pennsylvania
in a small little town called Berwick, PA. And my
family and I were very active in church, and I
would say that we did church really well every.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Sunday, Sunday night, Wednesdays. We were up there. And at
a young.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Age, I prayed a prayer when I was about five
and accepted Christ into my heart.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
But just grew up with that type of head knowledge.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
But it was really when I was nine years old
is when I fell in love.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I fell in love with basketball.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
One thing that was really big that separated me from
my teammates was my ability to practice for long periods
of time and not get bored. And I realized quickly
when I was about nine or ten that I had
three goals. One was to make my freshman eighteen, one
(02:22):
was to make varsity as a sophomore, and one was
to get it a Vision one scholarship for basketball. And
so I dedicated my time to that. One example that
just of me thinking or viewing the game differently was
in seventh grade going to the Berwick Middle School dance.
You know, when I'm dressed up in my half green,
(02:44):
half purple silk shirt with black jeans, no belt, of course.
SURET tucked in and I'm ready to just dance it
up while I go in and I'm walking past the
gym and the light is on. I jiggle the door.
The door is open. I go in and there's a
basketball waiting. Ripped my silk shirt off, and I worked
(03:04):
on my game for about two and a half hours
in the gym by myself. Came out after the dance
and my mom said, Hey, how is the dance? I said,
I don't know. I was working on my game the
whole time, and I didn't feel bad about it. I
didn't feel like I was missing out on anything. One
really important moment.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
For me came. I was a camp junkie.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I would go to camps all summer long from fifth
grade on and going into my freshman year, I flew
down to Texas and I met the head coach of
the Colony Texas, Tommy Thomas, legendary coach around these parts.
I was about five seven five eight, flat tops ized,
(03:43):
thirteen shoe nothing special to look at. But I had
these big dreams and these big goals. And I talked
to coach Thomas about these goals and he said, Matt,
that can happen for you down here in Texas well.
As a fourteen year old. I flew back to Pennsylvania,
where all of our family is from, and I told
my mom on the way home from the airport, I
(04:05):
need to move to Texas so I can be a
college basketball player. They asked my little sister, Becky, if
she's three years younger than me, if that was okay,
and she said, yeah, let's go. Within two weeks, our
entire family had changed their lives dramatically for the dreams
of a fourteen year old boy. I mean, you talk
about parents being invested. You move across the country to
(04:29):
a place where we know nobody, we have no family,
they're all in. So I had those three goals, and
I made my freshman eight team at the Colony, Texas,
where it's a Big five, a public school with a
lot of diversity. I had to learn real quick how
to play against athletic players, and how to get tough,
and how to not just use my physical skill but
(04:52):
my mental ability to play with these guys. I had
a great growth spurt going into my sophomore year, where
I went from a five eight to six one or
six ' two, really skinny but now I was tall
and skilled, and I made varsity as a sophomore. Well,
going into my senior year at the Colony were really
good on ranked seventh in the country. And I get
(05:14):
to go down to Waco, Texas to Bailey University to
go on my college visit with a guy named Dave Bliss.
Coach Bliss, who had been already a legendary coach, met
me and my mom at the gas station in Waco,
and he had a Bible in the back seat of
his car.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
And I think I'm.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Not saying that it was planned, but he was a
master salesman. He knew what I stood for and knew
what my mom was all about. And my mom made
the comment to me when she saw the Bible, she
felt like this was the right thing. So it was
pretty wise to have that in the back. But Coach
Bliss did a great job of taking us around the
(05:58):
whole campus and everybody that he introduced me to, he
introduced me like I was already one of his players,
and that like me, coming to Baylor was going to
be the best thing for our university. And I'll never
forget he said this. He said, Matt, I want you
to be one of the pillars of our program. And man,
(06:18):
any eighteen year old hears that from a Big twelve
school Division one, and you're the kind of kid I
am that has these goals. I would have signed there
if I could. On the way home, I looked at
my mom and I said, that's where I want to go,
and with tears in her eyes, she was like, oh,
I'm so glad. So freshman, sophomore, junior year, I played
every game at Baylor, meaningful minutes at times, lesser minutes
(06:43):
of times, but I realized how to bring value.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
By the end of my junior.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Year, I had solidified a starting role, and man, we
were about to be really, really good.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
We had future NBA.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Players that were sophomores, we had some role players like
myself that were juniors that were going to be seniors.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And going into.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
My senior year, we were picked to be in the
top four of the Big twelve, which that means that
you're probably top twenty five, and that means you're going
to march madness to the Big Dance.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
When we come back. More of Matt Salmon's story Arise
a Fall, Arise again here on our American Stories. Liehibibe
here the host of our American Stories. Every day on
(07:35):
this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country,
stories from our big cities and small towns. But we
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If you love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories
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give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and
(07:58):
give and we continue with our American Stories and Matt
Samon's story. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
There's the past till Latner, what's it up?
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I grew up watching Duke make its amazing runs in
the early nineties with Latner, you know, hitting that turnaround
shot against Kentucky, Like I practiced that shot in the dream,
not just playing college basketball, but was getting to that
stage and man like it really felt like it was
about to happen.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I can remember it.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Was a Friday afternoon in June of two thousand and three.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I just come in from playing sand volleyball.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
I stayed on the Baylor campus every summer to be
with our strength coach, to get extra classes in.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
But I just loved the university and I love being.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
On campus and being a basketball player at Baylor. And
one of my professors that I was friends with called
and said, Matt, what's up with your team?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
What's going on? I said, what do you you?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
What do you mean? What are they doing now? He said, no,
like you need to turn on the news right now.
They're saying that there's been a homicide and that basketball
players might be involved. So that summer of two thousand
and three was the longest summer of my life. We
had just finished weights and we were told that we
were having a team meeting in the locker room, which
(09:39):
that's not odd to have team meetings, but in the
locker room, our coaches were there. But the strange part
was there's policemen in there. That was the different part.
And so they go around and they're asking, hey, we
haven't seen Patrick. Nobody's seen Patrick in about a week.
His parents haven't heard from you guys know anything. The
interesting thing was, so Patrick was a red shirt, and
(10:00):
Patrick was a different guy. He'd be there for a week,
he'd be gone for two weeks, and we would never
have explanations.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
He was in and out all summer long.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
So for me not to see him for an extended
period of time wasn't strange at all. So I dismissed
that whole thing. Patrick will show up with like a
new tattoo or a new earring. He was in Vegas,
who knows. And then that Friday was when that came
out in the news and this story started to unfold,
and then these allegations start, they start to dig into
(10:30):
Coach Bliss a little bit. This was a hard moment
where I hadn't seen him in a few weeks and
we still didn't know where Patrick was. And I was
walking in the bottom of the Farall Center and I
was crossing paths with him, and he looked older to me,
you know, it looked really beat down. And I was
(10:50):
such a good follower, you know, as a player and
a coach, not a coach's pet, but man, I just
believed in them, and they I knew they loved me,
and I him, I said, Coach, I just want to
let you know that I'm sorry for what you're going
through and what people are saying about you. And I
told him, I was like, I don't think you deserve
any of that. And being around him so much I'd
(11:13):
once watched him do a four hour coaching video in
one take with no ums or us. He was an
incredibly accomplished speaker and a good salesman. But standing in
front of this guy, I felt like something's off. He
is not looking me in the eye. He's very kind
of frantic with what he's saying and doing. But he said, Matt,
(11:37):
you know what we found was when we went into
Patrick's apartment, we found drugs and money, and Matt, that's
how he was paying for school. And I said, wow,
like yes, sir, like that makes sense because it had
come out that Patrick wasn't on a scholarship.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Patrick was a six ' eight freak of an athlete that.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Could shoot, and he was going to be an NBA player,
Like he was one of the reasons why we were
going to be really good the next year. For us
to ever think that he wasn't on scholarship, it never
came up like I would look more like a walk
on than he did. And so, but that came out
(12:22):
that how is Patrick Denny paying for school? And then
Coach Bliss told me this story as a truth, and
as the good soldier that I was, I just went
along right with it.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Fast forward. They find Patrick's body.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
After about a month and a half, found out that
Carlton Dots, some one of our teammates, had shot and
killed him. Dottie had fled and was pleading insanity up
in Maryland, and Coach Bliss resigned before all the truth
came out. And my mom tells the story that she
looked out at the window of me and I was crying,
(13:00):
and she was crying, and it was like hard to
see her son kind of lose that innocence that I
had had and to be hurt like that. I went
to the press conference and they asked some of us
older players to talk. So I stood up in front
of my teammates and their families and defended Coach Bliss,
(13:23):
thanked him for all the time that he had had
with us, and told them that I would be staying
and that I hope they did too. And I had
this feeling kind of in my heart at that point
of I'm lying right now. I was the spokesman for
a program that I did not believe in, did not appreciate,
(13:44):
didn't really even want to.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Be a part of anymore.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
I had to get out of not just Waco, but
I felt like Dallas Fort Worth. So I flew back
to Pennsylvania to stay with that coach that I had
come down to Texas to go to camp with that
guy that I had known. I went back to he
moved back to Pennsylvania, and so I'm staying with him just.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
To get away.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Our media guy called me late late one night and
he said, Matt, have your phone on you tomorrow morning.
I said why, Like, what do you need me for?
He said, It's about to get really bad. I said,
how can it be worse than it is? Players did, coaches,
coaching staff's gone. He's like, just have your phone ready.
(14:29):
My coach came up and woke me up and said, Matt,
you need to look at the newspaper. And in that
newspaper was a recording written out of one of the
assistant coaches that was new that I didn't know that
well was in the office with Coach Bliss and other players,
not me, but other players, and it was him constructing
(14:53):
this lie of how they needed to blame Patrick, paint
him as a drug dealer and somebody that was that's
how he was paying for school. And Bliss even went
on to say, Patrick can't say anything about it.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
He's dead.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
And the thing that really hit me, I would think,
more than anybody else in the country besides Patrick's family,
that read that he had told me that story almost
word for word, but not as a lie.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
He told me as a truth.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
He didn't ask me to lie to people like he
was telling these players and these coaches to do. And
that was like a last straw moment of any type
of belief in people or goodness.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
That I had. Oh, I was so angry and mad, and.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
We found out that yeah, he knew that Patrick had threats,
and he had been paying for players and other players too.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
But that summer it was full of a lot of
hope and to spare that.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
You know, the question I never asked was God, how
can I be a light in this situation? How can
I bring good and lead people the right way? Instead
of what I did is I think I actually I
let people not think I did.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I know I did.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I led people the wrong way because when you say
that you stand for something and you believe something, and
then when it gets hard and you completely throw it away,
people will see that and they'll get confused. I think
I led people farther away from having the faith in
God because I was known for something and then completely
(16:40):
was doing the opposite when things get hard. So regret,
I mean, pain of discipline is far less than the
pain of regret.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
And that's one thing I regret.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
And you've been listening to Matt saman tell a heck
of a story about how his world unraveled in the
summer of two thousand and three. And I'll never forget
it myself. As these news stories and news accounts rolled
out from ESPN and all across sports pages and the
news pages of America, a murder in college basketball, drugs
(17:15):
and then ultimately the corruption at the core of the
coach and the program. But interestingly, Matt Simon put himself
in the middle of it, even though he didn't do
anything wrong. He failed himself as a leader and the
people around him as a leader, and failed himself and
his walk with his own God. And by the way,
to get the book The Leftovers Baylor Betrayal and Beyond
(17:38):
by Matt Salmon, go to Amazon or the usual Suspects
more of this remarkable story about basketball, about life, and
so much more. Matt Salmon's story continues here on our
American Stories, and we continue with our American stories in
(18:10):
the howering tale told by Matt Samon about the college
basketball program he was a part of and by a
senior year, he would be a starter on a team
that would more than likely end up in the Big
Dance and be a top ten or top twenty college program.
Let's pick up where Matt West left off.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
And so I was going into my senior year with
no coaching staff. I lost ten teammates that summer, two
to the tragedy, Carlton and Patrick, and then eight others
that decided not to come back or they graduated. And
that's a lot of turnover at that level. You'll have
three or four or five, and even now with the
transfer portal, but rarely is there an overhaul like that,
(18:55):
And rarely do you lose your best players. Where those
NBA guys that we had all left, and I found
myself in a very unfamiliar place where okay, basketball, since
I was nine years old has been the thing that
I've focused on and I've just had as my passion.
Well now it's the problem and I have no passion
(19:18):
for it. I'm upset with it. So the next thing
is I turned to Okay what's I got to go
back to my source, which I thought was my relationship
with God. And I realized at that point the foundation
that I thought I had really wasn't there. It was basketball.
Basketball is the problem. And I feel this hole in
(19:40):
my life for the first time, Well, what do you
fill that hole with?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I ran.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
I ran to things that I had never drank before
in my life until and really until I turned twenty one,
was the first time I ever had a sip of alcohol.
But even to that point, it wasn't anything that I
enjoyed or did.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
That much, but I ran to it. I had never
been a party guy.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
In fact, I can remember going to a party early
on in my college career. I wasn't a drinker and
I was known as a believer. And when I walked in,
I saw some of my friends hide their drinks put
them away because they didn't want me to see them
like that. They didn't want because that's what I stood for. Well,
(20:27):
in the span of two months, I completely destroyed that.
In fact, my place became the place to go and
that competitive nature that got me to become the player
that I was, because I always felt like as a
d one player at Baylor in the Big twelve, I
really didn't belong physically. They were too big and too
(20:48):
fast and too strong, and my skill wasn't good enough.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
So what did I rely on?
Speaker 3 (20:53):
I had to do more work, harder and push myself
farther than any other of my teammates. Willing to do
that type of competitiveness, when you throw it into the
party scene, is dangerous, and so I became really good
at that. I became a very angry person and resentful,
(21:13):
and I stopped trusting anyone. And so with that in mind,
I realized I couldn't go anywhere else to play as
a senior, because what am I gonna do? Call call
up Kentucky and say, hey, coach cal PARI my name
is Matt Samon.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I'm a senior. I'm six two and a half.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
I can't jump that well, but I did average four
and a half points last year.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Can I come like?
Speaker 3 (21:35):
It's just I knew I'd made a few calls, but
I knew that I was I was stuck at Baylor.
So I started to just stay in my apartment and
have those destructive habits, or I'd get out of town.
So I'm driving up to Dallas and I get a
call from somebody says, hey, you got a new coach.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
I'm like, what, Who in the world would take this job?
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Like you have no players, Baylors and the NCAA are
about to bring sanctions on your team for years to come.
Who would take this? A guy named Scott Drew, and
I said, never heard of him. A few weeks later,
Scott Drew comes in and we had to meet in
the baseball locker room. And I'm sitting in there, and
this is where the title of the Leftovers comes from.
(22:21):
I'm sitting in this locker room with myself and five
other scholarship players. The problem is is none of us
are stars, like we are role players at best, and
some even younger players that weren't even role players the
year before, they were bench dudes. And then we've got
four or five walk ons. We were leftovers. We were
(22:42):
leftover from everything that had happened, and for whatever reason,
we were still at this school. Coach Drew walks in
at thirty two years old with the same energy and
relentless joy that he has now. He's the exact same person.
He came in with this bounce in his step, with
(23:04):
this huge smile, and he kept talking about guys, guys, listen,
there's this there's joy in the future, there's joy in
the foundation that you were gonna set. The problem is is,
for the first time in my life, I sat back
as a very arrogant, jaded, frustrated twenty one year old,
and I looked around and for the first time in
(23:25):
my life, I completely disagreed with what my coach was saying.
I could not see any joy, any positivity that could
possibly come out, because see, here's the thing. I knew
what we were up against, and in my mind I
didn't think he did. He was coming from Valpo. Valpo'
is a great school. They played great competition. In my mind,
(23:47):
I thought, that's not Big twelve. That's not Texas, Ou, Kansas,
Oklahoma State A and M at the time, Missouri Colorado. Like,
it's just not these teams that have Hall of Fame
coaches and McDonald's all Americans that I've battled against the
last three years. You don't understand and look at our
(24:07):
supporting cast, like we were going to get killed. And
that's what happened at the beginning, and we were losing
the teams that we used to beat really bad. And
there's one game where it's the first time in I
believe in Division one basketball, high level basketball history that
a coach subbed out five scholarship players and put five
(24:28):
walk Ons in. And it was in Waco at home,
and our crowd went nuts. They were cheering so loud.
And the reason he took he put them in is
because we weren't playing very hard. We were giving, especially myself,
we were giving false effort. Our walk Ons played really hard, man,
and they were bringing energy and the crowd was appreciating it.
(24:49):
But scholarship players beat walk ons. There's just a difference
between them, and so that started to happen. Coach Drew
looked down at the bench at us and said, you
better play hard when you go back in. When I
walked on the floor at the Faral Center, I heard
something that I'd never heard before. They were booing the
walk Ons going out of the game and booing the
(25:12):
scholarship players going back in. I wanted to let them know,
maybe with a hand gesture, how I felt in that
moment about being booed. But it was really hard and
we lost that game by twenty and after the game,
in the locker room, taking a shower, just sitting there crying.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
I was ready to quit that night.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
And my parents had never allowed me to quit anything,
even eighth grade swim when I midway through the swimming season.
I hated this speedo, I hated swimming, I hated the
I wanted to play basketball.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
My mom would have let me quit.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I was ready to quit that night, and I didn't
think anybody would have really judged me for quitting that night.
And assistant coach came in and he said, Matt, show
up tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Just show up tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
And then at some point it happened where we started
to believe in each other, we started to believe in
our coaching staff, and we started to become competitive. Every
night was our championship. And that's a dangerous team when
you're not. Because but here's what.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
I think I forgot to say.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Before our season even started, we were told that we
weren't allowed to play in postseason. That's like you and
me being told, Hey, you're going to come and work
hard every single day, but I'm not paying you. Well,
I'm not coming to work then, buddy, And.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
You've been listening to Matt samon til a remarkable tale
of redemption, but it didn't come easy. Going into a
senior year, having lost ten teammates, he ran to alcohol,
the very thing he'd stayed away from his entire young life. Indeed,
he became a competitive drinker, a competitive partier, and excelled.
(26:56):
He was also growing increasingly angry and resentful and income
Scott Drew talking about the joy there was.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
In the future.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
When we come back, more of this remarkable story, and
please pick up Matt's book, The Leftovers, Baylor Betrayal and Beyond.
It's a real page turner. Pick it up at Amazon
or the Usual Suspect. More with Matt Samon's story when
we return here on our American story, and we continue
(27:38):
with the story of Matt Salmon here on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Let's pick up where.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
We last left off with Coach Scott Drew coming in
and slowly shaping and changing and forging the character of
this new Bailor team.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
And that's kind of the feeling we had all year long,
was why are we actually doing this?
Speaker 2 (28:00):
It's not worth it. But once you.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Start to look at every situation or goals to be
one to oh every night, play hard for each other,
and let's just go out and do something that nobody
thinks we can do. There's power in that. As a team.
We weren't supposed to win any Big Twelve games that year.
We're supposed to go oh in sixteen, and we ended
(28:24):
up we beat Iowa State at our place for our
first Big Twelve win.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
We ended up being A and M twice.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Nothing better than being A and M twice, and their
coach actually got fired the day after we beat them
the second time, because apparently the worst thing that you
can do is lose to a bunch of leftovers. And
then one of the big personalities in the Big Twelve
at that point was Bobby Knight.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
He was at Texas Tech.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
I had grown up being a Bobby Knight fan at Indiana,
and well, my first couple of years he because he
was there my sophomore, junior, and senior year he was
at Tech, and he would come out or he would
shake the head coach's hand, turn around and just bolt
not go through, shake assistant's hands or player's hands. And
I was always like, God, I want to shake his hand,
(29:12):
and you know, just because I had some Roy Williams
was at Kansas and I had some cool moments with
him the years before.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
And so senior year, we're at Texas Tech.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
We're actually up four going into the second half, playing
really well, but we just.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Ran out of gas. And that's what happened to us.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
I mean, I was averaging thirty eight thirty nine minutes
a game, and but we had played really hard, but
we lost that game. And I told myself before, when
this game's over, I'm going up to him. I don't
know what's going to happen. He may walk right through me,
passed me, not even shake, but I'm going to do it.
And so he was walking to half court and I
(29:49):
took a straight line towards him. I left the line,
I didn't even shake anybody. I went right toward him.
I said, Coach Night, I said, I just want to
let you know it's just been a pl pleasure getting
to play against you the last few years. He put
his arm, He's a big dude, put his arm around me.
He said, Matt, I'm telling you right now that if
(30:10):
I would have been at Tech when you came out
of high school, I would have recruited you really hard.
And oh man, like that year, all the stuff that
happened like that to me was a win, a personal
win like we lost. But I think my dad even
captured a picture of me standing at half court smiling.
(30:33):
Those were really cool moments when basketball came back.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Here's the interesting thing.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
I thought that those destructive habits that I had thrown
myself into, I thought it was just temporary.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I thought I was just coping. You know, I don't.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Laugh a lot anymore. Just let me laugh for a
couple hours and forget where I am. But coach Mills,
who was an assistant at Baylor, we used to have
team chapels at my apartment. He would come in and
there was one time where he just said, you know, guys,
don't think that you can do what you want whenever
you want right now without consequences. But then when you
(31:10):
get out in the real world, that these temptations will
go away, that you can just get back to what
you'd call right living. And I remember being such a cocky,
arrogant kid, going, you know what, in my head, you're wrong,
That's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to
live the way I want right now. I'm going to
(31:31):
be in control of my happiness. Well, fast forward nine
years of.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Living an extremely in moral life.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
It was my thirtieth birthday, and I was alone in
my apartment in McKinney, Texas, with a six pack, and
I thought, is this really?
Speaker 2 (31:57):
This is it?
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Thirty years old by myself, celebrating my birthday, just completely
alone and frustrated, and that same anger and resentment and
poor me, why me? Mentality that I adopted as a
twenty one year old, I still had it. After that night,
I went to a random church in Plano, Texas that
(32:22):
I had never gone to before.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
I just went. I sat in the back.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
And I heard a message that I felt like I
had heard hundreds of times. They passed around a card,
the visitor card, and growing up in church, you never
fill out the visitor card because you're never a visitor,
and so I but this card goes by, I filled
it out. I put my name in information. I said,
I'm angry and I have questions, and I put that
(32:49):
card in, and honestly, I never thought i'd hear back
from anybody. Few days, maybe a week goes by, and
I get a response from a lady at that church saying, Hey,
we love to have you come in and talk to
our pastor.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
And I emailed back.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
And forth with her, trying to figure out a spot
a time, and it just worked out. About two weeks later,
I went in, she opened the door for me. I
sat with her, talked with her for a little bit.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
She's really kind. And then I.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Went back and I got to talk with the pastor
and I laid out my story just kind of the
same way that I've done right here. And I told
him the story he said, and he said, Matt, and
I was really, you know, I love pistol Pete. Part
of pistol Pete's story is he was after his NBA
career has gone and he was lost. He's and he's
(33:35):
in his bed and he hears this voice and it's Jesus.
He hears Jesus's voice out loud, and pistol Pete said
it was like it was like he was in the
room with him and in his life changed instantly. And
I told this pastor, I was like, I'm waiting for
that voice, if God will talk.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
To me, if Jesus will speak to me like that.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
And he said, Matt, you can't be waiting around for
that like that doesn't happen all the time. He said,
you need to give up control. I said, what are
you talking about control? It's like you were a good
kid basketball was really in control of your life.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
When it went bad, you took control of your life.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
And it's kind of like this light bulb moment, and
I gave up control that day. You know, I was
saved that day, a few weeks after my thirtieth birthday, and.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
The change was pretty drastic.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
The things that I'd been running to for peace and
for comfort and it become really bad habits.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
The desire just wasn't there.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
The cool thing is is that day that I went
into that church, I was just angry and looking for answers.
But I think one thing I've learned is like my plan,
my goals as a little kid, was just to be
a college basketball player. Like I really didn't have anything
past the age of twenty one, I had no other goals.
And I realized that his plans are just so much
(35:13):
bigger and greater than our little plans are.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
His plan was.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
For me to meet Janna that day. She was the
lady that emailed me back, that opened the door to
that church, and we got married about eleven months after
that day, and we've been married now almost ten years.
And then when Baylor wins the national championship this last year, man,
(35:42):
we finally really have our ending to the leftovers. It
took us eighteen years, from six scholarship players and a
bunch of walk ons and a thirty two year old
coach to win the national championship and to be the
best and humble.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
To get to be a part of a small part
of that.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
When people ask me first eight to ten years after
playing college basketball, which normally I mean normally, it's a
cool thing to be able to say that you did
like less than three percent of high school players playing
college at any level, less than one percent of our
Division one, and so it's an extreme game of musical
chairs that if you're able to figure it out and
(36:20):
make it, it's special. When people ask what, ask me, did
you play? I say, yeah, I played? Where'd you play?
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Well?
Speaker 3 (36:26):
I played at Baylor? And I can see their eyes
that when were you there? I was there from two
thousand and two thousand and four? Were you there when
all that stuff went down? And it's no longer about
you know that achievement, it's about what did you know?
What can you tell us how crazy was it?
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Well?
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Now, especially them winning it all I get to puff
out my chest a little bit.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
You know, where'd you play? I played at Baylor? Oh wow?
National champions?
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Yeah we were, but you can't imagine where we came from.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
It's that kind of story now.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
And a great job is always on the production by
Greg Hengler and a special thanks to Matt Salmon for
sharing his story the good, the bad, and the ugly parts.
And by the way, make sure to get the leftovers
Matt Salmon's book and it's available at Amazon. And the
usual suspect and my goodness, there was some good. The
team was starting to turn it around. They beat A
(37:30):
and M twice. He had that encounter with Bobby Knight
when Night told him I would have recruited you hard.
But those bad habits he'd adopted, well, they weren't temporary.
And by the age of thirty, he found himself alone
in an apartment on his birthday in McKinney, Texas, and
he went to a local random church in Plano, Texas
and filled out a visitor card. I'm angry, I have questions,
(37:54):
and my goodness, everything from their turn. He returned to
his faith, returned to his God, and found a future
of hope and redemption the story of Matt Simon's redemption.
There were universities redemption their basketball program. Here on our
American Stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American stories.
They show where America is the star and the American people.
To subscribe to our podcasts, go to the iHeartRadio app
or wherever you get your podcasts. Up next to story
about one of the biggest scandals in college basketball history,
(00:30):
along with one of its biggest turnarounds.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
My name's Matt Samon and I'm the head boys basketball
coach at Grapevine Faith Christian School right outside of DFW
Dallas Fort Worth. And then that's what I do full time.
But what I get to tell my players about is
a story that a lot of them haven't heard before,
but their parents are probably familiar with. Or I remember
(00:58):
at some point hearing about what happened with Baylor basketball
in the early two thousands. And one of my dreams
growing up was to be a Division one basketball player,
but I never dreamt of being part of one of
the largest scandals or tragedies in college basketball history. And
going into my senior year down in Waco, that's exactly
(01:20):
where I found myself. But before that, you kind of
have to start back at how did basketball become so
important to me? So I grew up in eastern Pennsylvania
in a small little town called Berwick, PA. And my
family and I were very active in church, and I
would say that we did church really well every.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Sunday, Sunday night, Wednesdays. We were up there. And at
a young.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Age, I prayed a prayer when I was about five
and accepted Christ into my heart.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
But just grew up with that type of head knowledge.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
But it was really when I was nine years old
is when I fell in love.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I fell in love with basketball.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
One thing that was really big that separated me from
my teammates was my ability to practice for long periods
of time and not get bored. And I realized quickly
when I was about nine or ten that I had
three goals. One was to make my freshman eighteen, one
(02:22):
was to make varsity as a sophomore, and one was
to get it a Vision one scholarship for basketball. And
so I dedicated my time to that. One example that
just of me thinking or viewing the game differently was
in seventh grade going to the Berwick Middle School dance.
You know, when I'm dressed up in my half green,
(02:44):
half purple silk shirt with black jeans, no belt, of course.
SURET tucked in and I'm ready to just dance it
up while I go in and I'm walking past the
gym and the light is on. I jiggle the door.
The door is open. I go in and there's a
basketball waiting. Ripped my silk shirt off, and I worked
(03:04):
on my game for about two and a half hours
in the gym by myself. Came out after the dance
and my mom said, Hey, how is the dance? I said,
I don't know. I was working on my game the
whole time, and I didn't feel bad about it. I
didn't feel like I was missing out on anything. One
really important moment.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
For me came. I was a camp junkie.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I would go to camps all summer long from fifth
grade on and going into my freshman year, I flew
down to Texas and I met the head coach of
the Colony Texas, Tommy Thomas, legendary coach around these parts.
I was about five seven five eight, flat tops ized,
(03:43):
thirteen shoe nothing special to look at. But I had
these big dreams and these big goals. And I talked
to coach Thomas about these goals and he said, Matt,
that can happen for you down here in Texas well.
As a fourteen year old. I flew back to Pennsylvania,
where all of our family is from, and I told
my mom on the way home from the airport, I
(04:05):
need to move to Texas so I can be a
college basketball player. They asked my little sister, Becky, if
she's three years younger than me, if that was okay,
and she said, yeah, let's go. Within two weeks, our
entire family had changed their lives dramatically for the dreams
of a fourteen year old boy. I mean, you talk
about parents being invested. You move across the country to
(04:29):
a place where we know nobody, we have no family,
they're all in. So I had those three goals, and
I made my freshman eight team at the Colony, Texas,
where it's a Big five, a public school with a
lot of diversity. I had to learn real quick how
to play against athletic players, and how to get tough,
and how to not just use my physical skill but
(04:52):
my mental ability to play with these guys. I had
a great growth spurt going into my sophomore year, where
I went from a five eight to six one or
six ' two, really skinny but now I was tall
and skilled, and I made varsity as a sophomore. Well,
going into my senior year at the Colony were really
good on ranked seventh in the country. And I get
(05:14):
to go down to Waco, Texas to Bailey University to
go on my college visit with a guy named Dave Bliss.
Coach Bliss, who had been already a legendary coach, met
me and my mom at the gas station in Waco,
and he had a Bible in the back seat of
his car.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
And I think I'm.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Not saying that it was planned, but he was a
master salesman. He knew what I stood for and knew
what my mom was all about. And my mom made
the comment to me when she saw the Bible, she
felt like this was the right thing. So it was
pretty wise to have that in the back. But Coach
Bliss did a great job of taking us around the
(05:58):
whole campus and everybody that he introduced me to, he
introduced me like I was already one of his players,
and that like me, coming to Baylor was going to
be the best thing for our university. And I'll never
forget he said this. He said, Matt, I want you
to be one of the pillars of our program. And man,
(06:18):
any eighteen year old hears that from a Big twelve
school Division one, and you're the kind of kid I
am that has these goals. I would have signed there
if I could. On the way home, I looked at
my mom and I said, that's where I want to go,
and with tears in her eyes, she was like, oh,
I'm so glad. So freshman, sophomore, junior year, I played
every game at Baylor, meaningful minutes at times, lesser minutes
(06:43):
of times, but I realized how to bring value.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
By the end of my junior.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Year, I had solidified a starting role, and man, we
were about to be really, really good.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
We had future NBA.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Players that were sophomores, we had some role players like
myself that were juniors that were going to be seniors.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
And going into.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
My senior year, we were picked to be in the
top four of the Big twelve, which that means that
you're probably top twenty five, and that means you're going
to march madness to the Big Dance.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
When we come back. More of Matt Salmon's story Arise
a Fall, Arise again here on our American Stories. Liehibibe
here the host of our American Stories. Every day on
(07:35):
this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country,
stories from our big cities and small towns. But we
truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are
free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
If you love what you hear, go to Ouramerican Stories
dot com and click the donate button. Give a little,
give a lot. Go to Ouramerican Stories dot com and
(07:58):
give and we continue with our American Stories and Matt
Samon's story. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
There's the past till Latner, what's it up?
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I grew up watching Duke make its amazing runs in
the early nineties with Latner, you know, hitting that turnaround
shot against Kentucky, Like I practiced that shot in the dream,
not just playing college basketball, but was getting to that
stage and man like it really felt like it was
about to happen.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
I can remember it.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Was a Friday afternoon in June of two thousand and three.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
I just come in from playing sand volleyball.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
I stayed on the Baylor campus every summer to be
with our strength coach, to get extra classes in.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
But I just loved the university and I love being.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
On campus and being a basketball player at Baylor. And
one of my professors that I was friends with called
and said, Matt, what's up with your team?
Speaker 2 (09:15):
What's going on? I said, what do you you?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
What do you mean? What are they doing now? He said, no,
like you need to turn on the news right now.
They're saying that there's been a homicide and that basketball
players might be involved. So that summer of two thousand
and three was the longest summer of my life. We
had just finished weights and we were told that we
were having a team meeting in the locker room, which
(09:39):
that's not odd to have team meetings, but in the
locker room, our coaches were there. But the strange part
was there's policemen in there. That was the different part.
And so they go around and they're asking, hey, we
haven't seen Patrick. Nobody's seen Patrick in about a week.
His parents haven't heard from you guys know anything. The
interesting thing was, so Patrick was a red shirt, and
(10:00):
Patrick was a different guy. He'd be there for a week,
he'd be gone for two weeks, and we would never
have explanations.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
He was in and out all summer long.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
So for me not to see him for an extended
period of time wasn't strange at all. So I dismissed
that whole thing. Patrick will show up with like a
new tattoo or a new earring. He was in Vegas,
who knows. And then that Friday was when that came
out in the news and this story started to unfold,
and then these allegations start, they start to dig into
(10:30):
Coach Bliss a little bit. This was a hard moment
where I hadn't seen him in a few weeks and
we still didn't know where Patrick was. And I was
walking in the bottom of the Farall Center and I
was crossing paths with him, and he looked older to me,
you know, it looked really beat down. And I was
(10:50):
such a good follower, you know, as a player and
a coach, not a coach's pet, but man, I just
believed in them, and they I knew they loved me,
and I him, I said, Coach, I just want to
let you know that I'm sorry for what you're going
through and what people are saying about you. And I
told him, I was like, I don't think you deserve
any of that. And being around him so much I'd
(11:13):
once watched him do a four hour coaching video in
one take with no ums or us. He was an
incredibly accomplished speaker and a good salesman. But standing in
front of this guy, I felt like something's off. He
is not looking me in the eye. He's very kind
of frantic with what he's saying and doing. But he said, Matt,
(11:37):
you know what we found was when we went into
Patrick's apartment, we found drugs and money, and Matt, that's
how he was paying for school. And I said, wow,
like yes, sir, like that makes sense because it had
come out that Patrick wasn't on a scholarship.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Patrick was a six ' eight freak of an athlete that.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Could shoot, and he was going to be an NBA player,
Like he was one of the reasons why we were
going to be really good the next year. For us
to ever think that he wasn't on scholarship, it never
came up like I would look more like a walk
on than he did. And so, but that came out
(12:22):
that how is Patrick Denny paying for school? And then
Coach Bliss told me this story as a truth, and
as the good soldier that I was, I just went
along right with it.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Fast forward. They find Patrick's body.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
After about a month and a half, found out that
Carlton Dots, some one of our teammates, had shot and
killed him. Dottie had fled and was pleading insanity up
in Maryland, and Coach Bliss resigned before all the truth
came out. And my mom tells the story that she
looked out at the window of me and I was crying,
(13:00):
and she was crying, and it was like hard to
see her son kind of lose that innocence that I
had had and to be hurt like that. I went
to the press conference and they asked some of us
older players to talk. So I stood up in front
of my teammates and their families and defended Coach Bliss,
(13:23):
thanked him for all the time that he had had
with us, and told them that I would be staying
and that I hope they did too. And I had
this feeling kind of in my heart at that point
of I'm lying right now. I was the spokesman for
a program that I did not believe in, did not appreciate,
(13:44):
didn't really even want to.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Be a part of anymore.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
I had to get out of not just Waco, but
I felt like Dallas Fort Worth. So I flew back
to Pennsylvania to stay with that coach that I had
come down to Texas to go to camp with that
guy that I had known. I went back to he
moved back to Pennsylvania, and so I'm staying with him just.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
To get away.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Our media guy called me late late one night and
he said, Matt, have your phone on you tomorrow morning.
I said why, Like, what do you need me for?
He said, It's about to get really bad. I said,
how can it be worse than it is? Players did, coaches,
coaching staff's gone. He's like, just have your phone ready.
(14:29):
My coach came up and woke me up and said, Matt,
you need to look at the newspaper. And in that
newspaper was a recording written out of one of the
assistant coaches that was new that I didn't know that
well was in the office with Coach Bliss and other players,
not me, but other players, and it was him constructing
(14:53):
this lie of how they needed to blame Patrick, paint
him as a drug dealer and somebody that was that's
how he was paying for school. And Bliss even went
on to say, Patrick can't say anything about it.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
He's dead.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
And the thing that really hit me, I would think,
more than anybody else in the country besides Patrick's family,
that read that he had told me that story almost
word for word, but not as a lie.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
He told me as a truth.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
He didn't ask me to lie to people like he
was telling these players and these coaches to do. And
that was like a last straw moment of any type
of belief in people or goodness.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
That I had. Oh, I was so angry and mad, and.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
We found out that yeah, he knew that Patrick had threats,
and he had been paying for players and other players too.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
But that summer it was full of a lot of
hope and to spare that.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
You know, the question I never asked was God, how
can I be a light in this situation? How can
I bring good and lead people the right way? Instead
of what I did is I think I actually I
let people not think I did.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
I know I did.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I led people the wrong way because when you say
that you stand for something and you believe something, and
then when it gets hard and you completely throw it away,
people will see that and they'll get confused. I think
I led people farther away from having the faith in
God because I was known for something and then completely
(16:40):
was doing the opposite when things get hard. So regret,
I mean, pain of discipline is far less than the
pain of regret.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
And that's one thing I regret.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
And you've been listening to Matt saman tell a heck
of a story about how his world unraveled in the
summer of two thousand and three. And I'll never forget
it myself. As these news stories and news accounts rolled
out from ESPN and all across sports pages and the
news pages of America, a murder in college basketball, drugs
(17:15):
and then ultimately the corruption at the core of the
coach and the program. But interestingly, Matt Simon put himself
in the middle of it, even though he didn't do
anything wrong. He failed himself as a leader and the
people around him as a leader, and failed himself and
his walk with his own God. And by the way,
to get the book The Leftovers Baylor Betrayal and Beyond
(17:38):
by Matt Salmon, go to Amazon or the usual Suspects
more of this remarkable story about basketball, about life, and
so much more. Matt Salmon's story continues here on our
American Stories, and we continue with our American stories in
(18:10):
the howering tale told by Matt Samon about the college
basketball program he was a part of and by a
senior year, he would be a starter on a team
that would more than likely end up in the Big
Dance and be a top ten or top twenty college program.
Let's pick up where Matt West left off.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
And so I was going into my senior year with
no coaching staff. I lost ten teammates that summer, two
to the tragedy, Carlton and Patrick, and then eight others
that decided not to come back or they graduated. And
that's a lot of turnover at that level. You'll have
three or four or five, and even now with the
transfer portal, but rarely is there an overhaul like that,
(18:55):
And rarely do you lose your best players. Where those
NBA guys that we had all left, and I found
myself in a very unfamiliar place where okay, basketball, since
I was nine years old has been the thing that
I've focused on and I've just had as my passion.
Well now it's the problem and I have no passion
(19:18):
for it. I'm upset with it. So the next thing
is I turned to Okay what's I got to go
back to my source, which I thought was my relationship
with God. And I realized at that point the foundation
that I thought I had really wasn't there. It was basketball.
Basketball is the problem. And I feel this hole in
(19:40):
my life for the first time, Well, what do you
fill that hole with?
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I ran.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
I ran to things that I had never drank before
in my life until and really until I turned twenty one,
was the first time I ever had a sip of alcohol.
But even to that point, it wasn't anything that I
enjoyed or did.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
That much, but I ran to it. I had never
been a party guy.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
In fact, I can remember going to a party early
on in my college career. I wasn't a drinker and
I was known as a believer. And when I walked in,
I saw some of my friends hide their drinks put
them away because they didn't want me to see them
like that. They didn't want because that's what I stood for. Well,
(20:27):
in the span of two months, I completely destroyed that.
In fact, my place became the place to go and
that competitive nature that got me to become the player
that I was, because I always felt like as a
d one player at Baylor in the Big twelve, I
really didn't belong physically. They were too big and too
(20:48):
fast and too strong, and my skill wasn't good enough.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
So what did I rely on?
Speaker 3 (20:53):
I had to do more work, harder and push myself
farther than any other of my teammates. Willing to do
that type of competitiveness, when you throw it into the
party scene, is dangerous, and so I became really good
at that. I became a very angry person and resentful,
(21:13):
and I stopped trusting anyone. And so with that in mind,
I realized I couldn't go anywhere else to play as
a senior, because what am I gonna do? Call call
up Kentucky and say, hey, coach cal PARI my name
is Matt Samon.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
I'm a senior. I'm six two and a half.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
I can't jump that well, but I did average four
and a half points last year.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Can I come like?
Speaker 3 (21:35):
It's just I knew I'd made a few calls, but
I knew that I was I was stuck at Baylor.
So I started to just stay in my apartment and
have those destructive habits, or I'd get out of town.
So I'm driving up to Dallas and I get a
call from somebody says, hey, you got a new coach.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
I'm like, what, Who in the world would take this job?
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Like you have no players, Baylors and the NCAA are
about to bring sanctions on your team for years to come.
Who would take this? A guy named Scott Drew, and
I said, never heard of him. A few weeks later,
Scott Drew comes in and we had to meet in
the baseball locker room. And I'm sitting in there, and
this is where the title of the Leftovers comes from.
(22:21):
I'm sitting in this locker room with myself and five
other scholarship players. The problem is is none of us
are stars, like we are role players at best, and
some even younger players that weren't even role players the
year before, they were bench dudes. And then we've got
four or five walk ons. We were leftovers. We were
(22:42):
leftover from everything that had happened, and for whatever reason,
we were still at this school. Coach Drew walks in
at thirty two years old with the same energy and
relentless joy that he has now. He's the exact same person.
He came in with this bounce in his step, with
(23:04):
this huge smile, and he kept talking about guys, guys, listen,
there's this there's joy in the future, there's joy in
the foundation that you were gonna set. The problem is is,
for the first time in my life, I sat back
as a very arrogant, jaded, frustrated twenty one year old,
and I looked around and for the first time in
(23:25):
my life, I completely disagreed with what my coach was saying.
I could not see any joy, any positivity that could
possibly come out, because see, here's the thing. I knew
what we were up against, and in my mind I
didn't think he did. He was coming from Valpo. Valpo'
is a great school. They played great competition. In my mind,
(23:47):
I thought, that's not Big twelve. That's not Texas, Ou, Kansas,
Oklahoma State A and M at the time, Missouri Colorado. Like,
it's just not these teams that have Hall of Fame
coaches and McDonald's all Americans that I've battled against the
last three years. You don't understand and look at our
(24:07):
supporting cast, like we were going to get killed. And
that's what happened at the beginning, and we were losing
the teams that we used to beat really bad. And
there's one game where it's the first time in I
believe in Division one basketball, high level basketball history that
a coach subbed out five scholarship players and put five
(24:28):
walk Ons in. And it was in Waco at home,
and our crowd went nuts. They were cheering so loud.
And the reason he took he put them in is
because we weren't playing very hard. We were giving, especially myself,
we were giving false effort. Our walk Ons played really hard, man,
and they were bringing energy and the crowd was appreciating it.
(24:49):
But scholarship players beat walk ons. There's just a difference
between them, and so that started to happen. Coach Drew
looked down at the bench at us and said, you
better play hard when you go back in. When I
walked on the floor at the Faral Center, I heard
something that I'd never heard before. They were booing the
walk Ons going out of the game and booing the
(25:12):
scholarship players going back in. I wanted to let them know,
maybe with a hand gesture, how I felt in that
moment about being booed. But it was really hard and
we lost that game by twenty and after the game,
in the locker room, taking a shower, just sitting there crying.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
I was ready to quit that night.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
And my parents had never allowed me to quit anything,
even eighth grade swim when I midway through the swimming season.
I hated this speedo, I hated swimming, I hated the
I wanted to play basketball.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
My mom would have let me quit.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I was ready to quit that night, and I didn't
think anybody would have really judged me for quitting that night.
And assistant coach came in and he said, Matt, show
up tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Just show up tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
And then at some point it happened where we started
to believe in each other, we started to believe in
our coaching staff, and we started to become competitive. Every
night was our championship. And that's a dangerous team when
you're not. Because but here's what.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
I think I forgot to say.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
Before our season even started, we were told that we
weren't allowed to play in postseason. That's like you and
me being told, Hey, you're going to come and work
hard every single day, but I'm not paying you. Well,
I'm not coming to work then, buddy, And.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
You've been listening to Matt samon til a remarkable tale
of redemption, but it didn't come easy. Going into a
senior year, having lost ten teammates, he ran to alcohol,
the very thing he'd stayed away from his entire young life. Indeed,
he became a competitive drinker, a competitive partier, and excelled.
(26:56):
He was also growing increasingly angry and resentful and income
Scott Drew talking about the joy there was.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
In the future.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
When we come back, more of this remarkable story, and
please pick up Matt's book, The Leftovers, Baylor Betrayal and Beyond.
It's a real page turner. Pick it up at Amazon
or the Usual Suspect. More with Matt Samon's story when
we return here on our American story, and we continue
(27:38):
with the story of Matt Salmon here on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Let's pick up where.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
We last left off with Coach Scott Drew coming in
and slowly shaping and changing and forging the character of
this new Bailor team.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
And that's kind of the feeling we had all year long,
was why are we actually doing this?
Speaker 2 (28:00):
It's not worth it. But once you.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Start to look at every situation or goals to be
one to oh every night, play hard for each other,
and let's just go out and do something that nobody
thinks we can do. There's power in that. As a team.
We weren't supposed to win any Big Twelve games that year.
We're supposed to go oh in sixteen, and we ended
(28:24):
up we beat Iowa State at our place for our
first Big Twelve win.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
We ended up being A and M twice.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
Nothing better than being A and M twice, and their
coach actually got fired the day after we beat them
the second time, because apparently the worst thing that you
can do is lose to a bunch of leftovers. And
then one of the big personalities in the Big Twelve
at that point was Bobby Knight.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
He was at Texas Tech.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
I had grown up being a Bobby Knight fan at Indiana,
and well, my first couple of years he because he
was there my sophomore, junior, and senior year he was
at Tech, and he would come out or he would
shake the head coach's hand, turn around and just bolt
not go through, shake assistant's hands or player's hands. And
I was always like, God, I want to shake his hand,
(29:12):
and you know, just because I had some Roy Williams
was at Kansas and I had some cool moments with
him the years before.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
And so senior year, we're at Texas Tech.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
We're actually up four going into the second half, playing
really well, but we just.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
Ran out of gas. And that's what happened to us.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
I mean, I was averaging thirty eight thirty nine minutes
a game, and but we had played really hard, but
we lost that game. And I told myself before, when
this game's over, I'm going up to him. I don't
know what's going to happen. He may walk right through me,
passed me, not even shake, but I'm going to do it.
And so he was walking to half court and I
(29:49):
took a straight line towards him. I left the line,
I didn't even shake anybody. I went right toward him.
I said, Coach Night, I said, I just want to
let you know it's just been a pl pleasure getting
to play against you the last few years. He put
his arm, He's a big dude, put his arm around me.
He said, Matt, I'm telling you right now that if
(30:10):
I would have been at Tech when you came out
of high school, I would have recruited you really hard.
And oh man, like that year, all the stuff that
happened like that to me was a win, a personal
win like we lost. But I think my dad even
captured a picture of me standing at half court smiling.
(30:33):
Those were really cool moments when basketball came back.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Here's the interesting thing.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
I thought that those destructive habits that I had thrown
myself into, I thought it was just temporary.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I thought I was just coping. You know, I don't.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Laugh a lot anymore. Just let me laugh for a
couple hours and forget where I am. But coach Mills,
who was an assistant at Baylor, we used to have
team chapels at my apartment. He would come in and
there was one time where he just said, you know, guys,
don't think that you can do what you want whenever
you want right now without consequences. But then when you
(31:10):
get out in the real world, that these temptations will
go away, that you can just get back to what
you'd call right living. And I remember being such a cocky,
arrogant kid, going, you know what, in my head, you're wrong,
That's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to
live the way I want right now. I'm going to
(31:31):
be in control of my happiness. Well, fast forward nine
years of.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Living an extremely in moral life.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
It was my thirtieth birthday, and I was alone in
my apartment in McKinney, Texas, with a six pack, and
I thought, is this really?
Speaker 2 (31:57):
This is it?
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Thirty years old by myself, celebrating my birthday, just completely
alone and frustrated, and that same anger and resentment and
poor me, why me? Mentality that I adopted as a
twenty one year old, I still had it. After that night,
I went to a random church in Plano, Texas that
(32:22):
I had never gone to before.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
I just went. I sat in the back.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
And I heard a message that I felt like I
had heard hundreds of times. They passed around a card,
the visitor card, and growing up in church, you never
fill out the visitor card because you're never a visitor,
and so I but this card goes by, I filled
it out. I put my name in information. I said,
I'm angry and I have questions, and I put that
(32:49):
card in, and honestly, I never thought i'd hear back
from anybody. Few days, maybe a week goes by, and
I get a response from a lady at that church saying, Hey,
we love to have you come in and talk to
our pastor.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
And I emailed back.
Speaker 3 (33:03):
And forth with her, trying to figure out a spot
a time, and it just worked out. About two weeks later,
I went in, she opened the door for me. I
sat with her, talked with her for a little bit.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
She's really kind. And then I.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Went back and I got to talk with the pastor
and I laid out my story just kind of the
same way that I've done right here. And I told
him the story he said, and he said, Matt, and
I was really, you know, I love pistol Pete. Part
of pistol Pete's story is he was after his NBA
career has gone and he was lost. He's and he's
(33:35):
in his bed and he hears this voice and it's Jesus.
He hears Jesus's voice out loud, and pistol Pete said
it was like it was like he was in the
room with him and in his life changed instantly. And
I told this pastor, I was like, I'm waiting for
that voice, if God will talk.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
To me, if Jesus will speak to me like that.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
And he said, Matt, you can't be waiting around for
that like that doesn't happen all the time. He said,
you need to give up control. I said, what are
you talking about control? It's like you were a good
kid basketball was really in control of your life.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
When it went bad, you took control of your life.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
And it's kind of like this light bulb moment, and
I gave up control that day. You know, I was
saved that day, a few weeks after my thirtieth birthday, and.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
The change was pretty drastic.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
The things that I'd been running to for peace and
for comfort and it become really bad habits.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
The desire just wasn't there.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
The cool thing is is that day that I went
into that church, I was just angry and looking for answers.
But I think one thing I've learned is like my plan,
my goals as a little kid, was just to be
a college basketball player. Like I really didn't have anything
past the age of twenty one, I had no other goals.
And I realized that his plans are just so much
(35:13):
bigger and greater than our little plans are.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
His plan was.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
For me to meet Janna that day. She was the
lady that emailed me back, that opened the door to
that church, and we got married about eleven months after
that day, and we've been married now almost ten years.
And then when Baylor wins the national championship this last year, man,
(35:42):
we finally really have our ending to the leftovers. It
took us eighteen years, from six scholarship players and a
bunch of walk ons and a thirty two year old
coach to win the national championship and to be the
best and humble.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
To get to be a part of a small part
of that.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
When people ask me first eight to ten years after
playing college basketball, which normally I mean normally, it's a
cool thing to be able to say that you did
like less than three percent of high school players playing
college at any level, less than one percent of our
Division one, and so it's an extreme game of musical
chairs that if you're able to figure it out and
(36:20):
make it, it's special. When people ask what, ask me, did
you play? I say, yeah, I played? Where'd you play?
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Well?
Speaker 3 (36:26):
I played at Baylor? And I can see their eyes
that when were you there? I was there from two
thousand and two thousand and four? Were you there when
all that stuff went down? And it's no longer about
you know that achievement, it's about what did you know?
What can you tell us how crazy was it?
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Well?
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Now, especially them winning it all I get to puff
out my chest a little bit.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
You know, where'd you play? I played at Baylor? Oh wow?
National champions?
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Yeah we were, but you can't imagine where we came from.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
It's that kind of story now.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
And a great job is always on the production by
Greg Hengler and a special thanks to Matt Salmon for
sharing his story the good, the bad, and the ugly parts.
And by the way, make sure to get the leftovers
Matt Salmon's book and it's available at Amazon. And the
usual suspect and my goodness, there was some good. The
team was starting to turn it around. They beat A
(37:30):
and M twice. He had that encounter with Bobby Knight
when Night told him I would have recruited you hard.
But those bad habits he'd adopted, well, they weren't temporary.
And by the age of thirty, he found himself alone
in an apartment on his birthday in McKinney, Texas, and
he went to a local random church in Plano, Texas
and filled out a visitor card. I'm angry, I have questions,
(37:54):
and my goodness, everything from their turn. He returned to
his faith, returned to his God, and found a future
of hope and redemption the story of Matt Simon's redemption.
There were universities redemption their basketball program. Here on our
American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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