You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will by Colin Cowherd Page B
Authors: Colin Cowherd
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impersonators?
There are all sorts of things you can lose in Las Vegas, but for me the city isn’t defined by what I left behind but by what stayed with me. No matter how many showers you take, something is bound to stick to you once you leave.
The city provides opportunities to unearth the buried truth in all of us. In Vegas, you can take your reckless judgment out for a walk. You can invite yourself into any and all kinds of oddball encounters. You can be as dangerous and uninhibited as you want.
Vegas simply lobs the pitch over the heart of the plate and begs you to swing away. For me, the place is truth serum covered in neon.
I was fortunate enough to land my first broadcasting job in Las Vegas in 1986, back before it became the monorailed, corporatized, culinary hot spot it is today.
It was headlined by the three Ts: Tyson, Tark, and Trouble. The Mob still had an active presence and the growth spurt was just beginning. The city’s, that is—not mine.
Tark, of course, is shorthand for Jerry Tarkanian, the former UNLV basketball coach who both fascinated and bothered me in equal measure. Most broadcasters begin their careers covering minor-league teams. Mine began covering the nation’s most controversial coach.
Anywhere.
Ever.
He and I had our differences, but I’ve never met anyone in sports like Tark the Shark. He was a really good man. Or maybe he wasn’t. I can go either way.
To say Tarkanian was complex would be like calling Fenway Park an old sandlot. Tark would be brought to tears by children and was known to interrupt a recruiting session by telling a young prospective UNLV Rebel that he would be better off going to Stanford rather than his public desert institution. He once told a luncheon crowd he loved taking his teams to tournaments in Hawaii because most black players don’t want to hang out at the beach. He said it without an ounce of malice but instead with the authority of someone who—after twenty-five years of coaching—was simply relaying something he perceived to be an absolute.
One of his favorite pastimes was criticizing coaches who lamented the recruiting process. As he saw it, “You get paid to watch basketball in the day and eat steaks and drink beer at night on the university’s dime. What’s so hard about that?”
He was the most honest coach I ever covered.
Sometimes.
Tark had a personal valet/shadow named Mike Toney who was straight out of central casting. Toney wore cheap sweat suits with the same deluded pride Ronny from
Jersey Shore
wore his fake tan. One of Toney’s jobs was to handle Tarkanian’s enormous, contractually negotiated ticket allotment from the school. During his peak years, when the Runnin’ Rebels were routinely in the national-title conversation, that allotment was pure gold and he was sitting on a mountain of it. Whatever Tark wanted he bartered for, or at least Toney did. Anyone who covered the program during that period knew it was an ugly scheme, but we weren’t IRS agents. And frankly, some of Tark’s allies had all the charm of Paulie Walnuts.
The Rebels’ starting five, despite coming from some less-than-idealbackgrounds, drove nicer cars than the media members who covered them. Yet for the bench players—the guys who were six through twelve on the roster—it was the same beat-up Datsuns or creaky bicycles popular with the rest of the student body.
Convicted points shaver Richie “The Fixer” Perry in a hot tub with UNLV players might have seemed outrageous to the national press, but I had only one question: Was it the players’ hot tub, or Richie’s?
This wasn’t Iowa State. Then again, Vegas isn’t Ames.
Tarkanian argued with me one day about the players he recruited. Some of them had checkered backgrounds, but Tark’s voice rose as he told me his kids just deserved a chance in life and that they’d never hurt a soul.
His voice grew reflective when he asked, “Without opportunities, where would I be?”
He was a
There are all sorts of things you can lose in Las Vegas, but for me the city isn’t defined by what I left behind but by what stayed with me. No matter how many showers you take, something is bound to stick to you once you leave.
The city provides opportunities to unearth the buried truth in all of us. In Vegas, you can take your reckless judgment out for a walk. You can invite yourself into any and all kinds of oddball encounters. You can be as dangerous and uninhibited as you want.
Vegas simply lobs the pitch over the heart of the plate and begs you to swing away. For me, the place is truth serum covered in neon.
I was fortunate enough to land my first broadcasting job in Las Vegas in 1986, back before it became the monorailed, corporatized, culinary hot spot it is today.
It was headlined by the three Ts: Tyson, Tark, and Trouble. The Mob still had an active presence and the growth spurt was just beginning. The city’s, that is—not mine.
Tark, of course, is shorthand for Jerry Tarkanian, the former UNLV basketball coach who both fascinated and bothered me in equal measure. Most broadcasters begin their careers covering minor-league teams. Mine began covering the nation’s most controversial coach.
Anywhere.
Ever.
He and I had our differences, but I’ve never met anyone in sports like Tark the Shark. He was a really good man. Or maybe he wasn’t. I can go either way.
To say Tarkanian was complex would be like calling Fenway Park an old sandlot. Tark would be brought to tears by children and was known to interrupt a recruiting session by telling a young prospective UNLV Rebel that he would be better off going to Stanford rather than his public desert institution. He once told a luncheon crowd he loved taking his teams to tournaments in Hawaii because most black players don’t want to hang out at the beach. He said it without an ounce of malice but instead with the authority of someone who—after twenty-five years of coaching—was simply relaying something he perceived to be an absolute.
One of his favorite pastimes was criticizing coaches who lamented the recruiting process. As he saw it, “You get paid to watch basketball in the day and eat steaks and drink beer at night on the university’s dime. What’s so hard about that?”
He was the most honest coach I ever covered.
Sometimes.
Tark had a personal valet/shadow named Mike Toney who was straight out of central casting. Toney wore cheap sweat suits with the same deluded pride Ronny from
Jersey Shore
wore his fake tan. One of Toney’s jobs was to handle Tarkanian’s enormous, contractually negotiated ticket allotment from the school. During his peak years, when the Runnin’ Rebels were routinely in the national-title conversation, that allotment was pure gold and he was sitting on a mountain of it. Whatever Tark wanted he bartered for, or at least Toney did. Anyone who covered the program during that period knew it was an ugly scheme, but we weren’t IRS agents. And frankly, some of Tark’s allies had all the charm of Paulie Walnuts.
The Rebels’ starting five, despite coming from some less-than-idealbackgrounds, drove nicer cars than the media members who covered them. Yet for the bench players—the guys who were six through twelve on the roster—it was the same beat-up Datsuns or creaky bicycles popular with the rest of the student body.
Convicted points shaver Richie “The Fixer” Perry in a hot tub with UNLV players might have seemed outrageous to the national press, but I had only one question: Was it the players’ hot tub, or Richie’s?
This wasn’t Iowa State. Then again, Vegas isn’t Ames.
Tarkanian argued with me one day about the players he recruited. Some of them had checkered backgrounds, but Tark’s voice rose as he told me his kids just deserved a chance in life and that they’d never hurt a soul.
His voice grew reflective when he asked, “Without opportunities, where would I be?”
He was a
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