THE TOUR DE SOUTHWEST:

FLASHBACK TO ANOTHER ERA OF MEDIA

by Larry Carlson 8/16/2023

As the years rush by at warp speed, and I consider Methuselah a brother in arms,it's tempting to consider almost all facets of the past as "better days."

Watch "Mad Men" on TV and you're liable to start wishing you could go back to your Dad's era, when men were men and women were dames.  Everyone had a bottle of booze in their office desk.  And still quaffed martinis at lunch.

Football still had semi-small conferences and rollicking rivalries that simmered 364 days annually.  And if you were a member of the sports media, you got daily access to the players and coaches you covered.  Then, a month before the season began, your conference held a "media tour," with travel to each school in your conference.

Understand that...for decades now, "efficiency" has demanded that writers and broadcasters converge on one bland location, like Arlington, TX, rather than visit the various campuses for preseason interviews.

Fourteen Big XII head coaches -- over two days -- recently took the stage to recite bland, homogenous clatter about their teams.  And four or five players, well-schooled in PR and avoiding bulletin board material or rat poison were available to provide more pablum.

All of this provided very little "news."   Some media in attendance felt the total presentation time, not counting Commissioner Brett Yormark's filibuster, took only four to five hours of the two days.

A week later, over in Nashville, where even at Vanderbilt, "It Just Means More," as per the mantra of the SEC, four days of media did at least go daily from 9 a.m. till 3:30 or so.

Maybe it was the same schlocky "coachspeak" and so forth but...folks like Nick Saban and Lane Kiffin always make things more compelling.

All this is to say, once upon a time, some 45 Augusts ago, this writer somehow talked his bosses at Austin's KVET Radio, into sending him on the ten-day, nine-school SWC Media Tour.

I was a 25-year-old pup (please, don't do the math) and still recall actually gaining ten pounds, back when I could afford to.  The spreads put on by the universities' football programs, not to mention, free "Hospitality Hour," at each stop (well, maybe not in Waco) just crushed my usual diet of bologna sandwiches, ramen noodles or Ranch Style beans.  Back when those cheap but flavorful legumes still came in a can that boasted "Husband Pleasin' "

Anyway, it wasn't like I tricked KVET.  I figured I would get tons of audio tape at each stop, with players and the head coach, even assistants, and would be able to stockpile it until, say "Arkansas week."  Because you were not gonna get access to opposing teams' personnel by phone in October.

The plan worked to perfection and I'm actually certain that KVET got its money's worth.

I worked hard every day, but...how tiring was it to prep for one-on-one interviews, talk in-depth with three or four stars from each team plus the coaches and AD's?  It wasn't.  It was a blast.

And then writing and voicing my stories and calling 'em in back to Austin took just a few more hours.  There were lots of TV guys from the various markets on our tour, a few dozen heavyweights of the newspaper world and I was the lone radio cat making the entire tour.

Still, I learned not to always be glib with other reporters around.  Mid-way through the tour, I was sitting beside Danny Robbins of the Austin American-Statesman, when he asked, "What do you think of the tour, so far, Larry?"

"Beats hell outta working," I chirped, smirking.

The next day when I called in my stories, the news department at KVET let me have it.

"Hey, nice ten-day vacation, Carlson."

Danny's column had mentioned the congenial and collegial atmosphere on the tour, and wrote, "Beats hell outta working," one Austin radio sportscaster said.

Hmmm.  There was exactly one radio guy on the circuit.

Back to the start of the tour.  We first gathered in Fort Worth, to get the lowdown on lowly TCU.  The Frogs had won about two games per season throughout the decade.  As I recall, Coach F.A. Dry lived up to his nickname.

But the food and 'ritas at Joe T Garcia's (on TCU's tab, of course) were excellent, as was the company.

Next up was neighboring SMU, and the Mustangs had young, roguishly handsome Ron Meyer as head coach.  Plus colorful guys like QB Mike Ford and LB Putt Choate.

All made for good copy, good sound bites.  And I was starting to get to know my media

counterparts a little bit.

Understand this:  I had grown up in San Antonio, reading the great Dan Cook to learn and laugh, five days a week while also following him as the 10 pm sports anchor for KENS-TV, located in the same building as the SA Express-News.  Cook was a god-like sports figure in San Antonio.

He was like the swaggering men you'd read about from the '30s...Damon Runyon, Ring Lardner and Grantland Rice.  Cook was a UH grad who heavily covered DKR's Longhorns and always attended and opined on the heaviest of heavyweight fights, the Indy 500, the Kentucky Derby, the Super Bowl, etc.

When he opened a bar, called "The Timeout Club" in '73, it was perfect timing for me.

That was the summer the drinking age dropped to 18. At twenty, I was instantly eligible to

cruise over there with buddies and sink a drink.  Occasionally, the great man himself would be greeting patrons and we would shake his hand.  Each night at ten o'clock, when Cook's sportscast would be split up by a commercial break, Dan would plug his own club. "We'll take a brief..Timeout..and we'll be right back."

On the first days of the tour, it was evident that Cook and his cohorts...notables such as Dave Campbell, Denne Freeman of the Associated Press; SWC Media Director Bill Morgan and Bob "Chicken Fry" Galt of the Dallas Times-Herald, would hold court, tell the best jokes and tales and could drink any of the small fry media under the table.  These guys were legends for a reason.

Using my "San Antonio boy" status, I was -- after just a few nights -- able to have some splendid conversations with Cook and his posse. 

My inclusion into "the fraternity" came while we were in Houston, at the old Tidelands II, for two nights of Rice and U of H (which showed off its own Hilton School of Hotel & Restaurant Management by serving lobster tails and such).  It was the time during the tour (after TCU/SMU and flights to Lubbock, then Fayetteville, then Space City...and before bus trips to College Station, Waco and Austin) for the much revered annual Media Tour Tennis Tournament.

I guess 16 of us entered the draw.  Campbell, Cook and Morgan were the most serious players; they played all the time on the road.

I was an old high school tennis player -- zero power but could keep getting everything back and move people around -- and won my first two matches.  Now came a semi-final with Dave Campbell, the legendary Waco writer and Texas Football publisher.  Turns out that Dave was the multi-year reigning champ.  But I played well and beat him, advancing to the finals against a guy I knew, Steve Fallon.  He was an Austin TV sportscaster and son of the legendary Frank Fallon, voice of the Baylor Bears.

Dan Cook sat in as the Chair Umpire at Rice's courts and I was able to beat Steve for the championship, and win a nice new racket.  Now the revered scribes started calling me

Buh-jorn, as in Bjorn (Borg) and getting me to sit in on their cocktail hours every night.

Then we'd play tennis doubles either before or after the next day's interview session.  

The bus rides were times for zany humor, ribald jokes told loudly andgeneral fraternity party hijinks.  When it was in the news headlines that there was a new Pope, Bill Morgan quickly, masterfully folded a newspaper into a towering pontiff's hat, donning it and sprinkling "holy water" at a busload of overgrown teenagers.

En route to Waco, some of the newspaper giants started a chant at the bus driver:  "We want ice cream, we want ice cream."  The driver pulled into the next town's Dairy Queen and about 35 of us poured into DQ, overwhelming a middle-aged lady at the counter.  She was already flustered, and stammered about one order at a time.  

Cook, of course, was at the head of the queue and with a courtly bow, told her "We appreciate that, Ma'am.  We're just on afternoon leave from the prison over in Seagoville."

Classic.  You should've been there.

Baylor was memorable for a singular specimen of football player.  He fascinated me in our one-on-one, displaying a thoughtful, solemn, erudite speech that belied his on-field ferocity.  He seemed professorial, doctoral. 
Mike Singletary wasn't that big of a name just yet.  But he soon would be.

That night, eight of us media types somehow piled into one car and -- without a Baylor "hospitality room," to entertain us, made our way to a theatre for a brand new movie.  Turns out, it fit like a glove.  The name of it was "Animal House," and we were already re-reciting lines later at the motel.

The tour ended in Austin a day later, with one of the best moments of the ten days.

Background:  The previous fall, the '77 season, besides being known for Earl's Heisman and UT's 11-0 start under Fred Akers, had a dark side.  It was the "TransAm" scandal at U of H.  Darrell Shepard was the Coogs' prize signee from the spring, and instantly had his very own version of the car made famous right then by Burt Reynolds' "Smokey and the Bandit" movie.

Now, a year later, at the early stops on the tour, Orville Henry, the venerable columnist from Little Rock's Arkansas Democrat, would ask -- in the opening group session interviews -- each team's starting QB, "What kind of car do you drive?"

Well, after eight chapters of that, UT publicist deluxe, Bill Little, had heard about Henry's monotonous probe, and Texas QB Randy McEachern had been prepared for the moment.

"Oh, I drive a burnt orange Cadillac," Randy drawled.  "It's got big horns up on the front hood."

Broke everybody up, except for Orville.  

After the floating fraternity party of double-digit days, it was a wake-up check to get back to my humble apartment just off South Congress, a challenge to get back to the regular routine.

But it wasn't that tough.  It was almost football season for the '78 Longhorns.

And whenever Dan Cook and Bill Morgan made it up to Austin, about every other Friday, they'd call me at the station and get me to meet them for tennis and a drink out at lavish Lakeway.

The next day, the Horns would be playing and I would be hosting the Longhorn Locker Room

Show for KVET.  Pretty damn cool.

I was twenty-five and livin' the dream.  And Darrell Shepard and his TransAm were

headed to Norman, Oklahoma for a new chapter in pre-NIL play for pay.

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