Ex-Indiana player Jadlow recounts his highs and lows

Todd Jadlow, Lawrence resident and former Indiana University basketball player, looked up from his plate at a local Mexican restaurant to describe the car he was driving 121 mph on K-10 with his then 2-year-old daughter on board, a trip that ended with his fourth drunk-driving arrest in six months and second of the day.

“BMW 750i, called an active hybrid,” Jadlow said. “It ran off electric and gas, so it had twin turbos. It had 1,200 pounds of torque. It could just flat-out fly. It was my dream car.”

And it played a pivotal role in another one of his living nightmares. That’s how life has gone for Jadlow: a series of highs and lows, bashes and crashes.

High: Averaged 10.7 points for the Hoosiers as a senior, two years after sitting out the 1986-87 national-championship season as a redshirt because of ankle surgery.

Low: Dec. 11, 2013. Two DUI arrests in Overland Park while driving with a suspended license, one at 1:30 a.m., the next that afternoon.

Todd Jadlow

“They pull you over, park your car,” Jadlow said, “take you to the police station, write you a ticket, send you home. As long as someone picks you up, they let you go. So my sister picked me up, took me right back to my car, got in my car and drove home, went to sleep, woke up, had a couple of drinks, went to Lawrence, picked up my daughter.”

He said he was driving the speed limit behind three cars when they all pulled into the next lane, right about where K-10 meets K-7.

“I punched it and went past them,” Jadlow said. “Well, I was in a $130,000 car that could go zero to 100 in three seconds. I got up to 121 mph and the officer was around the other side of that interchange.”

That was his last ride in his dream car and he said it came when he was one monthly payment of $1,979 short of owning the title. He served a year in Johnson County Jail in Gardner, three months of work release and three months in a sober-living house.

When he regained his freedom, he said, his dream car and house were gone and so were his 50-50 custodial rights to his daughter, now 5. He’s written off the car and the house and has gone to court in an attempt to regain partial custody. He said he has been clean and sober since his double-DUI day.

Jadlow, 50, has made national news this week because of some of the stories in his book, “Jadlow: On The Rebound,” co-written with Tom Brew and published by Hilltop30 Publishers.

The headlines have centered neither on that dangerous day, nor on the story about how he stuck a loaded revolver into his mouth to kill himself, but couldn’t pull the trigger because, “I kept thinking about my children.”

Salvation stories don’t sell, even ones about college basketball players from big-time programs driven to the depths of despair by alcohol and cocaine. For the most part, the names of coaches are the ones in bright lights because they stay and the players come and go.

Jadlow happened to play for the largest lightning rod in the history of college basketball. Even in retirement, Bob Knight remains revered by some, reviled by others, for some a mixture of both.

Think of Jadlow’s book as one complex character writing about another, different in so many ways and forever linked.

‘They’re not allegations’

In “Jadlow: On the Rebound,” Jadlow writes that Knight:

— Punched him in the back of the head with a closed fist during a walkthrough for an NCAA Tournament game and his ears were ringing for several days.

— Made fun of his facial tic in the huddle and broke a clipboard over his head in the same game against Louisville, the one from which a photo of Knight pushing him back onto the court made the cover of Sports Illustrated.

“If you don’t stop the (expletive) twitch, I’m going to throw your ass out of here,” he quoted Knight as saying.

— Threw tampons at teammate Daryl Thomas and instructed managers to wallpaper Daryl Thomas’ locker with pictures of female private parts.

Powerful allegations.

“They’re not allegations,” Jadlow said, putting his fork down. “This was the life of an Indiana basketball player, the antics that went on every day.”

Despite that, Jadlow vowed never to return to his alma mater as a means of protesting the firing of Knight, whom he called, “a father figure.”

“I want to make it clear, I love coach to death,” Jadlow said. “In no way, shape or form am I trying to demean him. All I’m doing is simply relating my stories from when I was at IU. During those times, these are things that we dealt with. I’m extremely proud to have played for coach, to have been an Indiana player. That means a lot to me and I hope somewhere along the way we still have a relationship.”

The reality of publishing is that if someone has close ties to a celebrity, nobody’s interested in a book unless the whole story about the celebrity, warts and all, is told.

“After that clipboard (incident), I felt a little defeated, humiliated about what had just happened,” Jadlow said.

Then the former post player pivoted into praise of his Hall of Fame coach.

“What people don’t know is he does so much behind the scenes, helping people, doing charitable acts,” Jadlow said. “People don’t see those things or understand the kindness this guy has got in his heart. In the book I talk about him as a father figure, someone I have huge respect for, always will, and someone I’m damn proud about.”

Jadlow said Knight declined an opportunity to be interviewed for the book. Reporters who have tried to reach Knight for a comment have not had any success.

A father-daughter relationship in repair

Jadlow makes public appearances to share his story of salvation. His second daughter Adriana, 20, a Free State graduate and a sophomore at Kansas State, joined him for a couple of recent ones in Indianapolis.

The father rivets crowds by sharing the role Adriana played in his one-day-at-a-time recovery.

Raised Catholic in Salina, Jadlow stopped going to church years ago.

“When I was in jail, every day someone would have a Bible study,” Jadlow said. “One day I got down on my knees and said, ‘Lord, either show me a better way to live or take me out of here.’ And that same day I got a letter from Adriana, and in her letter, just out of the blue it said, ‘God never gives his soldiers battles they can’t handle and he saves his toughest battles for his warriors.’ “

Jadlow, his voice shaking, apologized for tearing up and then shared that since his second chance at freedom, which began in late June, 2015, includes him serving as an usher every Sunday at St. Michael, a Catholic church in Leawood. He has lived in Lawrence since his release and works at a store in Lenexa owned by his fiance.

Adriana lived with her father as a sophomore in high school before moving back in with her mother.

Reached by phone, Adriana said, “It was really eye-opening getting to see my dad talking to people (at high schools in Indianapolis,) then to see the letters students who listened to that talk sent him.”

Her tales of living with her father no doubt opened eyes and ears as well.

“One thing that really sticks out to me, and this is from way back when we were living in Salina,” Adriana said, “we had this plate and it had a chip on it. I would always remember when my mom and dad would have people over, I’d see this white stuff on that plate and always assumed it was flour. I was probably 6 and I remember getting close to that plate and I put my hand by a red straw that was on it and my dad freaked out: ‘No, don’t touch that!’ When all that happened (two arrests in one day), that brought that memory back to me and I was like, ‘OK, it all makes sense now.’ “

During the first semester of her sophomore year in high school, she said she was oblivious to her father’s drinking.

“Second semester was when it got really bad,” she said. “For the winter formal, he let me take his nice BMW to drive my date and me. He’s texting me, ‘You need to get back here. I need to take my car. I need some alcohol.’ I had to leave my date for a good hour. I was confused: ‘Why is he doing this? Why is he freaking out about getting a bottle of alcohol?’ During the end of the year he would yell at me and scream at me because I was in high school and some of my friends would drink and he thought I was probably doing that too. I think he could see in the future and was worried I would follow his footsteps.”

Adriana’s first city rivalry game

High: Adriana scored a pivotal bucket and free throw late in her first game against Lawrence High and scored eight points in the 60-56 victory in The Jungle.

Low: Fresh off the victory, she went into the locker room and discovered that her phone had blown up with texts from friends wondering if she knew or was related to the Todd Jadlow who was in the headlines for a DUI double-double.

“That was a huge blow,” Adriana said.

The tough memory gives way to a nurturing voice colored with a hint of pride when she asked for an honest assessment of how her father is doing.

“I think he’s doing great, honestly,” Adriana said. “When he first came out, I was kind of weary: Is he going to end up being one of those people who relapses? When I would visit him, he would just say, ‘All I want to do is have a drink.’ Throughout the entire process, I tried to do my best to be there for him, help him, motivate him to stay on the right track.

“Obviously, he hasn’t gone back to wanting to do any of that stuff. He’s doing great. I definitely love the fact he’s now trying to use his experience to bring awareness and help people.”

Grateful for coach Knight, driving privileges, life

Jadlow is required to blow into an Ignition Interlock Device to start his car and repeat that every 15 or 30 minutes on prompting to keep the car running.

“I feel fortunate I didn’t kill anybody, my kids, somebody else on the road or myself,” Jadlow said. “I’m fortunate. The only thing I can do is try to reach out and help those who are struggling and prevent others from trying.”

Jadlow has a Facebook page titled, “Todd Jadlow Give It Back Foundation.”

He hopes the page and the book lead to speaking engagements.

“It probably does even more for me than for those kids in the audience because it keeps me going in the right direction,” Jadlow said. “Also, it’s energizing. It’s like going back on that court again.”

He said no matter how big the crowd, as soon as he tells his tales of despair, “you can hear a pin drop.”

“I tell them I remember what it was like sitting in the audience, listening to someone like me talk and saying, ‘I’m never going to be like that guy.’ Then that one bad choice to do cocaine in my friend’s apartment after I had graduated … I tell people basketball is my salvation, too. Had I not played for coach Knight, who knows what path I would have been on. Maybe it would have started a long time ago.”

He said he never would have considered doing drugs during his Indiana days.

“Playing there was no-nonsense and I wasn’t about to lose my scholarship by going out partying,” Jadlow said. “Doing things like that, it wasn’t even on the radar when I played. It wouldn’t even have been possible.”

Why’s that?

“Because there were no regulations about how long you could practice,” Jadlow said with a smile.