"Eddie" Documentary: What UK Fans Can Expect

A documentary chronicling the life of Eddie Sutton, the Hall of Fame-bound head college basketball coach who passed away last month, will premiere tonight on ESPN at 9 p.m.

And you should watch it.

“Eddie” will recount the highs and the lows of Sutton’s career, of which there were many each way, including his troubled tenure at the University of Kentucky. It’s unclear how much time will be spent on Sutton’s four years in Lexington because he has a 37-year career to cover in two hours, but we do know his era at UK will be discussed between tales from Oklahoma State and Arkansas, as well as his personal demons off the court.

As for the Kentucky stuff, which is what we are most interested in, the documentary’s official trailer sheds some light on what’s ahead from the film.

Here’s what Big Blue Nation can expect:

 

— We’ll get a glimpse at the April 2nd, 1985 introductory press conference when Sutton was officially named Joe B. Hall’s successor as the head coach of the Wildcats.

“Believe me, I would’ve crawled all the way to Lexington,” he said of his first meeting with UK president Otis Singletary at the time. “Fortunately, I was already here for the Final Four.”

 

— We’ll see a young Dave Baker and a young Rob Bromley with Sutton on the late-80s WKYT set. In the throwback clip from the documentary’s trailer, Baker says, “Ever since you got here, you’ve been dogged by stuff off the court.”

 

— Hey, look! Jerry Tipton!

Tipton covered Sutton at UK and the NCAA violations that came with him.

 

— Get ready for Rex Chapman’s “brutal honesty.” According to Scott Sutton, one of Eddie’s three sons, Chapman called Sean Sutton before he was set to do his interview for the documentary and asked what he should say. Sean Sutton told him to tell the truth, and he did just that.

“Rex said some things that I’d never heard that my father did, and yeah, pretty surprising,” Scott Sutton told KJRH in Tulsa.

Just spoke with Scott Sutton (@ScottSutton1970) about the @eddiesuttonfilm documentary airing Monday on @espn.

On @RexChapman's brutal honesty and why the family wasn't afraid to let the whole truth of Eddie's life be told in the doc. pic.twitter.com/Nsu9TQ8r9v

— Cayden McFarland (@caydenmc) June 26, 2020

Chapman, one of Sutton’s star players at Kentucky and a key figure in the storytelling of this documentary, shares a memory of finding Sutton passed out drunk. As he tells it, “Down at the very end of the hall, it looked like someone was dead. It was coach. He was so drunk. We freaked out. We didn’t know what to do.”

Expect some positive memories from Rex too.

 

— Sean Sutton, who played at UK under his father, says, “Everything that could go wrong, went wrong, that last year at Kentucky.”

 

— John Calipari also makes the list of guests we’ll hear from as Sutton’s story is told:

 

Again that’s tonight at 9 p.m. on ESPN.