The Maturation of J Reed: Vol. 14

Once I got home my sadness turned into full depression. I had other scholarship offers, but Pitt is where I wanted to go. I spent all of Sunday evening in the bed. I didn't accept any calls and I didn't want any company. I thought I needed at least a day to get myself together so that I can go look people in the eye and pretend that I wasn't hurt by Pitt's decision. I was wrong. I stayed in my room for the next three days. People were at school anxiously awaiting my "good" news and I was at home wallowing in self pity. Not only was I hurting about not being able to go to Pitt, I felt like I had let everybody down. I was all set to have a press conference, because I would've been the first player since Jerry Porter to play at a big time college program, but I would have to face everyone and tell them that my honesty may have screwed up my chances of that.

I arrived at school on Wednesday to a bunch of people waiting to hear how my trip went. I knew that I couldn't break down in front of everyone, so I just told everyone it was cool and that I had to take my other visits before I made a decision. I don't think anybody could read me back then, but if they were able to, they would have been able to see that I was hiding something.

The fact that I had other scholarship offers didn't cheer me up any. I already knew that if Pitt could pull out of a deal with me, then so could the other schools. I was right. I started to get call after call telling me pretty much the same thing that the coaches at Pitt said. I would say that I couldn't believe that this was happening to me, but I did believe it. I figured that Pitt would alert the other schools of my injury in an attempt to make sense of their decision to pull my offer. They would look stupid if I went to a school that played them and shined. This is just my opinion and I have no factual evidence to prove this. But here I stood, one of the best players in my city, without a scholarship offer from a division 1 program. It all seemed like a sick joke.

I was so desperate to play at a the division 1 level, that in the spring, I took an unofficial visit to Morgan State University. I knew by this time that no 1-A school would take a chance on me, so I kept my search to all black colleges.
Morgan seemed like the logical choice at the time because I had two former high school teammates that were already on the squad. Plus they had offered me a scholarship my 11th grade year but it some how wasn't honored due to a change in the coaching staff. So I went there as a last ditch effort to save my dream of playing professionally (back then I thought only division 1 players played in the pros).
They showed me no love that weekend. I wasn't allowed to talk to the coaches directly and I wasn't treated like the caliber of athlete that I thought I was. I felt disrespected. I was thinking to myself at the time, "How the hell can sorry *ss Morgan treat me like this?!? They have been the worst team in their conference for years! They need me!" Obviously my thoughts didn't matter. They told me, via one of my former teammates, that I was too slow to play in their defense, so if I wanted to play for them, I would have to pay my own tuition and walk on. I went home pissed off that I even wasted my time.