The Baylor Basketball Incident: An Eyewitness Tells the Story of One of the Biggest Scandals (and Turnarounds) in NCAA History

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Visit wellsfargo.com slash active cash. Terms apply. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the 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, a story about one of the biggest scandals in college basketball history along with one of its biggest turnarounds. Let's take a listen. My name is Matt Saiman 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 at some point hearing about what happened with Baylor basketball you know in the early 2000s 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 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 Sunday Sunday night Wednesdays we were up there and at a young age I prayed a prayer when I was about five and accepted Christ into my heart but just grew up with that type of head knowledge but it was really when I was nine years old is when I fell in love and I fell in love with basketball 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 A-team one was to make varsity as a sophomore and one was to get a division 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 and I'm dressed up in my half green half purple silk shirt with black jeans no belt of course shirt 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 now I jiggle the door the door is open I go inside and there's a basketball waiting rip my my silk shirt off and I worked 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 was 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 for me came I was a camp junkie I would go to camps all summer long from fifth grade on and going into my freshman year I 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 uh flat top size 13 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 14 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 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 I I our entire family had changed their lives dramatically for the dreams of a 14 year old boy I mean you talk about parents being invested you move across the country to 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 a team at the colony Texas where it's a big 5a 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 my mental ability to play with these guys I had a great growth spurt going into my sophomore year where I went from about 5 8 to 6 1 or 6 2 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 we're really good I'm ranked seventh in the country and I get 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 already a legendary coach met me and my mom at the gas station in Waco and and he had a bible in the back seat of his car and I think I'm not saying that it was planned but he was a master salesman he knew what I stood for 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 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 you I want you to be one of the pillars of our program and man any 18 year old that hears that from a big 12 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's like oh I'm so glad so freshman sophomore junior year I played every game at Baylor meaningful minutes at times lesser minutes at times but I realized how to bring value by the end of my junior year I had solidified a starting role and man we were about to be really really good we had future NBA players that were sophomores we had some role players like myself that were juniors that were going to be seniors and going into my senior year we were picked to be in the top four in the big 12 which that means that you're probably top 25 and that means you're going to march madness to the big dance when we come back more of Matt Sammon's story a rise a fall a rise again here on Our American Stories we have here the host of our American stories every day on 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 our american stories dot com and click the donate button give a little give a lot go to our american stories dot com and give have you ever wondered what it would be like to have supervision enhanced hearing extraordinary reflexes to be dare we say superhuman well Roku's new pro series tv can't do any of that for you but with a 4k screen side firing speakers and a blazing fast refresh rate it'll sure feel like it elevate your entertainment using all your favorite apps like iHeart and play all your music radio and podcasts with the new Roku pro series your senses aren't better your tv is wasn't that delicious so good your bill ladies i got it no i got it seriously i insist i insisted first oh don't be silly you don't be silly people with the wells fargo active cash credit card prefer to pay because they earn unlimited two percent cash back on purchases okay rock paper scissors for it rock paper scissors shoot no the wells fargo active cash credit card visit wells fargo dot com slash active cash terms apply oh such a clutch off-season pickup dave i know right i was worried we'd bring back the same team oh no i met those blackout motorized shades mvp of the room blinds.com made it crazy affordable to replace our old blinds hard to install no it's easy even you could do it nice i installed these and then got some for my mom too you fly across the country to do the install nope blinds.com can do it all all she had to do is pick what she wanted she talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure and install look at you a hall of fame son oh i just picked the winning team they're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings in the world oh blinds.com is the goat the goat shop blinds.com right now and get up to 45 off select styles plus a professional measure and a 100 satisfaction guarantee save up to 45 at blinds.com blinds.com rules and restrictions may apply cheap caribbean is celebrating more than just the new year in 2025 cheap caribbean vacations is celebrating its 25th birthday too you're invited to join in on the birthday fun and book a beach vacation with more savings now through february 3rd you can unlock up to 250 off site wide vacation packages celebrate these awesome savings at your favorite beach and book your next all-inclusive vacay at cheap caribbean.com your 250 off is waiting and we continue with our american stories and matt thayman's story let's pick up where we last left off there's the pass to leitner puts it up yes i grew up watching duke make its amazing runs in the early 90s with leitner you know hitting that turnaround shot against kentucky like i practiced that shot and in the dream not just playing college basketball was getting to that stage and man like it really felt like it was about to happen i can remember it was a friday afternoon in june of 2003 i just come in from playing sand volleyball i stayed on the the baylor campus every summer to to be with our strength coach to get extra classes in but i just loved the university i loved being on campus and being a basketball player at baylor hello and one of my professors that i was friends with called and said matt what's up with your team what's going on i said what do you uh what do you 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 2003 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 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 the interesting thing was so patrick was a red shirt and 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 he was in and out all summer long for so for me not to see him for an extended period of time wasn't strange at all so i 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 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 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 feral center and i was crossing paths with him and he looked older to me you know looked really beat down and i was such a good follower you know as a player and and a coach not a coach's pet but man i just believed in them and they i knew they loved me and i saw 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 once watched him do a four-hour coaching video in one take with no ums or us he was 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 you know what 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 scholarship patrick was a 6-8 freak of an athlete that could shoot and he was going to be an mba 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 when but that came out 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 fast forward they find patrick's body and after about a month and a half found out that carlton dotson one of our teammates had shot and killed him dotty had fled and was pleading insanity up in maryland and coach bliss resigned before all the truth came out and my mom tells this story that she looked out at the window of me and i was crying and 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 our my teammates and their families and defended coach bliss 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 didn't really even want to be a part of anymore 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 to get away 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 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 dead coaches coaching staff's gone he's like just have your phone ready 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 uh 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 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 and bliss even went on to say patrick can't say anything about it he's dead 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 he told me it as a truth 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 that i had oh i was so angry and mad and we found out that yeah he knew that patrick had threats and he had been paying for players and other players too but that summer it was full of a lot of hope and despair um that you know the question i never asked was god how can i be a light in this situation how can i bring good or and and lead people the right way and instead of what i did is i i think i actually i let people not not think i did i know i did 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 or you completely throw it away people will see that and they'll get uh confused i think i think i led people farther away from having a faith in god because i was known for something and then completely was doing the opposite when things get hard so regret i mean pain of discipline is far less than the pain of regret and that that's one thing i regret and you've been listening to matt saman tell a heck of a story about how his world unraveled in the summer of 2003 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 and then ultimately the corruption at the core of the coach and the program but interestingly matt saman 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 bailer betrayal and beyond by matt saman go to amazon for the usual suspects more of this remarkable story about basketball about life and so much more matt saman's story continues here on our american stories have you ever wondered what it would be like to have supervision enhanced hearing extraordinary reflexes to be dare we say superhuman well roku's new pro series tv can't do any of that for you but with a 4k screen side firing speakers and a blazing fast refresh rate it'll sure feel like it elevate your entertainment using all your favorite apps like iheart and play all your music radio and podcasts with the new roku pro series your senses aren't better your tv is wasn't that delicious so good your bill ladies i got it no i got it seriously i insist i insisted first oh don't be silly you don't be silly people with the wells fargo active cash credit card prefer to pay because they earn unlimited two percent cash back on purchases okay rock paper scissors for it rock paper scissors shoot no the wells fargo active cash credit card visit wellsfargo.com active cash terms apply with the best all-inclusive vacation deals to mexico and the caribbean booking your getaway with cheap caribbean vacations means you have more freedom to do your deal whether you want to enjoy snorkeling endless margaritas and more or simply soak up the best of your life with the wells fargo active cash credit card book a link endless margaritas and more or simply soak up the sun and sand in a tropical paradise cheap caribbean vacations has your deal for that plan and book the exact way you want at exactly the right price for you by using our exclusive budget beach finder or find a featured all inclusive package to iberostar hotel and resorts in jamaica and do your deal at cheapcaribbean.com hello it is ryan and i was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on chumbacassino.com i looked over the person sitting next to me and you know what they were doing they're also playing chumbacassino everybody's loving having fun with it chumbacassino is home to hundreds of casino style games that you can play for free anytime anywhere so sign up now at chumbacassino.com that's chumbacassino.com and live the chumba life sponsored by chumbacassino no purchase necessary vgw group void where prohibited by law 18 plus terms and we continue with our american stories and the howling tale told by matt saman about the college basketball program he was a part of and by his 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 10 or top 20 college program let's pick up where matt last left off and so i was going into my senior year with no coaching staff i lost 10 teammates that summer two to the tragedy one you know 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 and rarely do you lose your best players where those mba guys that we had they 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 and i've and i've just had as my passion well now it's the problem and i have no passion for it i'm upset with it so the next thing is i turn 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 my life for the first time well what do you fill that hole with i ran i ran to things that i had never drank before in my life until and really until i turned 21 was the first time i ever had a sip of alcohol but even at that point it wasn't anything that i enjoyed or did that much but i ran to it i'd never been a party guy in fact uh there's uh 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 can i 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 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 d1 player at baylor in the big 12 i really didn't belong physically they were too big and too fast and too strong and my skill wasn't good enough so what did i rely on i had to do more work harder and push myself farther than any other of my teammates were 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 and i stopped trusting anyone and so with that in mind um 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 calipari my name is matt sam and i'm a senior i'm six two and a half i can't jump that well but i did average four and a half points last year can i come like it's just i knew i i made a few calls but i knew that i was i was stuck at baylor um so i started to just stay in my apartment and have those destructive habits or i 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 like what who in the world would take this job like you have no players bailers and the nca 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 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 left over from everything that had happened and for whatever reason we were still at this school coach drew walks in at 32 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 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 going to set the problem is is for the first time in my life i sat back as a very arrogant jaded frustrated 21 year old and i looked around and i for the first time in 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's a great school they play great competition in my mind i thought that's not big 12 that's not texas ou kansas oclama state a&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 supporting cast like we are going to get killed and that's what happened at the beginning and we were losing to 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 walk-ons in and it was it was in waco at home and our crowd went 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 they were they were bringing energy and the crowd was appreciating it 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 ferrell center i heard something that i'd never heard before they were booing the walk-ons going out of the game and booing the 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 i it was it was really hard we lost that game by 20 and after the game in the in the locker room taking a shower just sitting there crying i was ready to quit that night and my parents had never allowed me to quit anything even eighth grade swim when i midway through the swimming season i i hated the speedo i hated swimming i hated the i wanted to play basketball my mom would have let me quit 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 uh show up tomorrow just show up tomorrow uh 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 here's what i think i forgot to say 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 you've been listening to matt samen tell a remarkable tale of redemption but it didn't come easy going into his senior year having lost 10 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 he was also growing increasingly angry and resentful and in comes scott drew talking about the joy there was in the future when we come back more of this remarkable story and please pick up matt's book the leftovers baler betrayal and beyond it's a real page turner pick it up at amazon or the usual suspect more with matt samen's story when we return here on our american story what are you looking for in a new smart tv 4k picture quality high quality and immersive sound a sleek design all of those are givens but only the new roku pro series has all of those and the roku streaming experience an award-winning os get fast easy access to all your apps like iheart where you can stream all your favorite music radio and podcasts all day and regular all-inclusive trips to roku city the new roku pro series a smart tv built by the streaming pros wasn't that delicious so good your bill ladies i got it no i got it seriously i insist i insisted first oh don't be silly you don't be silly people with the wells fargo active cash credit card prefer to pay because they earn unlimited two percent cash back on purchases okay rock paper scissors for it rock paper scissors shoot no the wells fargo active cash credit card visit wellsfargo.com active cash terms apply cheap caribbean is celebrating more than just the new year in 2025 cheap caribbean vacations is celebrating its 25th birthday too you're invited to join in on the birthday fun and book a beach vacation with more savings now through february 3rd you can unlock up to 250 off site-wide vacation packages celebrate these awesome savings at your favorite beach and book your next all-inclusive vacay at cheapcaribbean.com your 250 off is waiting hello it is ryan and i was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on chumbacassino.com i looked over the person sitting next to me and you know what they were doing they're also playing chumbacassino everybody's loving having fun with it chumbacassino is home to hundreds of casino style games you can play for free anytime anywhere so sign up now at chumbacassino.com that's chumbacassino.com and live the chumba life sponsored by chumbacassino no purchase necessary vgw group void where prohibited by law 18 plus terms and we continue with the story of matt samen here on our american stories let's pick up where we last left off with coach scott drew coming in and slowly shaping and changing and forging the character of this new baler team and that's kind of the feeling we had all year long was why are we actually doing this it's not worth it but once you start to look at every situation our goal is to be one and 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 12 games that year we're supposed to go oh and 16 and we ended up we beat iowa state at our place for our first big 12 win we ended up being a and m twice 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 12 at that point was bobby knight he was at texas tech i had grown up being a bobby knight fan at indiana and well my first couple 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 assistants hands or players hands and i was always like god i want to shake his hand and uh you know just because i had some roy williams was at kansas and i had some cool moments with him the years before and so senior year we're at texas tech we're actually up four going into the second half playing really well but we just ran out of gas and that's what happened to us i mean i was averaging 38 39 minutes a game and but we had played really hard but we lost that game and i had told myself before when this game's over i'm going up to him i don't know what's gonna happen he may walk right through me past me not even shake but i'm gonna do it and so he was walking to half court and i took a straight line towards him i left the line i didn't even shake anybody i went right toward him i said coach knight i said i just want to let you know it's just been a 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 i would have been at tech when you came out of high school i would 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 those were those were really cool moments when basketball came back here's the interesting thing i thought that those destructive habits that i thrown myself into i thought it was just temporary i thought i was just coping you know i don't laugh a lot anymore just let me laugh for a couple hours and forget where i am but coach mills who is an assistant at baylor we used to have team chapels at my apartment he would come in and there's 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 get out in the real world that that these temptations will go away that you can just get back to what you 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 gonna do i'm gonna live the way i want right now i'm gonna be in control of my happiness well fast forward nine years of living an extremely immoral life it was my 30th birthday and i was alone in my apartment in mckinney texas with a six-pack and i thought is this really this is it i'm 30 years old by myself celebrating my birthday just completely alone and frustrated and the same anger and resentment and poor me why me mentality that i adopted as a 21 year old i still had it after that night i went to a random church in plano texas that i'd never gone to before i just went i sat in the back 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 and so i but this card goes by i filled it out i put my name and information i said um i'm angry and i have questions and i put that 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'd love to have you come in and talk to our pastor and i emailed back 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 she's really kind and then i 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 and i told him the story he said and he said matt and i was really you know i love pistol p part of pistol peter's story is he was after his mba career is gone and he was lost he's and he's in his bed and he hears this voice and it's jesus he hears jesus voice out loud and pistol peter said it was like it was like he was in the room with him and and his life changed instantly and i told this pastor i was like i'm waiting for that voice uh if god will talk to me if jesus will speak to me like that and he said matt you can't be waiting around for that he's like that doesn't happen all the time he said you need to give up control i said what do you what do you do you do you do you do 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 when it went bad you took control of your life 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 30th birthday and the the change was pretty drastic the the things that i'd been running to for peace and for comfort and it become really bad habits the desire just wasn't there the cool thing is is that day that i went into that church i was just angry and looking for answers but i think that's the 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 21 i had no other goals and i realized that his plans are just so much bigger and greater than our little plans are his plan was for me to meet janna that day she was the lady that emailed me back that opened the church and we got married about 11 months after that day and we've been married now almost 10 years and then when baylor wins the national championship this last year man we finally really have our ending to the leftovers it took us 18 years from six scholarship players and a bunch of walk-ons and a 32 year old coach to win the national championship and to be the best and i'm able to get to be a part of a small part of that when people ask me first eight to ten years after playing college basketball which norm 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 play in college at any level less than one percent of the our division one and so it's an extreme game of musical chairs that if you're able to figure it out and make it it's special when people ask would ask me did you say yeah i played where'd you play well i played at baylor and i can see their eyes that when were you there i was there from 2000 2004 um 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 well now especially them winning it all i get to puff out my chest a little bit you know where'd you play i played at baylor oh wow national champions yeah we were but you can't imagine where we came from you know it's that kind of story now and a great job as always on the production by greg hengler and a special thanks to matt seaman for sharing his story the good the bad and the ugly parts and by the way make sure to get the leftovers matt seaman's book and it's available at amazon and the usual suspects and my goodness there was some good the team was starting to turn it around they beat a and m twice he had that encounter with bobby knight when knight 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 30 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 and my goodness everything from there turned he returned to his faith returned to his god and found a future of hope and redemption the story of matt seaman's redemption baylor university's redemption their basketball program here on our american stories what are you looking for in a new smart tv 4k picture quality high quality and immersive sound a sleek design all of those are givens but only the new roku pro series has all of those and the roku streaming experience an award-winning os get fast easy access to all your apps like iheart where you can stream all your favorite music radio and podcasts all day and 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