Louisville Magazine

JUL 2015

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 7.15 45 PEOPLE'S CHOICE "Nowhere else in the United States do we get to cover horse racing in our business like we do here." "In a different life, I was a horse trainer." "My best friend growing up, his dad owned harness horses, and when I was 16, he invited me to go to a harness track called Yonkers Raceway. And I went to my dad, scared to death he'd say no — we'd never talked about this kind of thing before — and he looked at me and said, 'On one condition.' And I'm like, 'Oh, my God. Here we go.' He said, 'Next time, you take me.' That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship with me and my dad. We went to tracks for the rest of his life." "The TV part didn't come until my senior year in college. I was in a class at the University of Tennessee that did a daily news show. I directed it. One day, the main anchor got sick. Best TV Sportscaster Fred Cowgil WLKY-TV sports director Fred Cowgill, 57, has won 16 Best of Louisville awards since he started the job almost 30 years ago. If we run a BOL category for sportscaster, you can bet that Cowgill will win it. We asked him to share some wisdom he's learned over the past three decades. — Rob Cummins The head of the program knew I had on-air experience as a radio guy, so he asked me if I'd sit in as news anchor. At the end of the show he came out and said, 'If you don't do this for a living, you're nuts." "I was interviewing in 1980 for this new network. It was called CNN. Nobody knew what it was. I'm like, 'Why would I want to go there?' I took the job: $3.35 an hour. That was February 1980. By September 15, I was on air as an anchor. Twenty-two years old on national TV." "One of my old friends, Jack Nolan, is the play-by-play guy for Notre Dame football and basketball on the radio. He and I started at CNN together. Every single time I see him, he tells the same story. There was a huge ice storm in Atlanta, and nobody could get to work. He and I both get a phone call: Whoever gets here frst is on the air. I got there frst." "Mr. Turner would not let us wear jeans. He had a pet peeve against blue jeans." "We'd brag at CNN about the computer editing we had, which, by today's standards, would be like fying a Mercury capsule versus a space shuttle. I went to local TV in 1982. To get baseball scores, there was a ticker tape. Literally." "The Internet. Social media. Now everybody's got a voice. But those people weren't trained to do the things we are. It's funny, the guys who brag on the one they got right versus the 2,000 they got wrong." "What [U of L athletic direc- tor] Tom Jurich has done — name any school in the history of collegiate sports that has done what this school has done in an almost two-decade window." "Top fve sports stories since I've been here. No. 5 is the rise of U of L football from near ex- tinction. No. 4 is the Churchill Downs renovations, which led to enormous success and record attendance. No. 3 is the 1996 UK basketball national title team, which I consider the best team I've covered, period. Nine guys end up in the NBA. No. 2 is the 2013 U of L bas- ketball national championship team. They were the most fun to cover. Also, if Ameri- can Pharoah wins the Triple Crown, that'd be at No. 2. No. 1 is the U.S. Ryder Cup win at Valhalla in 2008. If Disney had a script like that they would've rejected it as too unbeliev- able." "I mean think of the odds: 350 million Americans. There are 50 television markets with about four guys in each mar- ket that are sports directors. So about 200. It's so against the odds that Mine That Bird would be a favorite compared to me."

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