Colin Cowherd

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Colin Cowherd (born January 6, 1964) is an American sports radio personality. He is currently the host of The Herd with Colin Cowherd on ESPN Radio and ESPNU. He is also the co-host of the television show SportsNation on ESPN2.

[edit] Career

Cowherd grew up in Grayland, Washington and attended Eastern Washington University^[1] He began his career as the play-by-play voice for the Pacific Coast League's Las Vegas Stars. He eventually became a sports director at KVBC-TV in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he was named Nevada's Sportscaster of the Year five times. He also served as sports anchor at WTVT-TV in Tampa, Florida. He moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1996, where he spent nearly two years at KGW Northwest NewsChannel 8, working as a sports anchor and hosting the thirty-minute 'A guy's take on baseball' program. In 2001 The Herd moved from an afternoon time slot on all-sports radio KFXX to the morning drive time.

[edit] ESPN Radio

In 2003, Cowherd was selected to replace Tony Kornheiser for the late morning time slot (10 a.m. - 1 p.m. (ET)) on ESPN Radio.

His show, The Herd with Colin Cowherd is a syndicated talk radio show broadcast on ESPN Radio affiliates throughout the United States and online at ESPNRadio.com. The show features commentary on sports news, perspective on other news stories, and interviews with popular analysts and sports figures. Demographics and regional preferences are frequent topics of his program. The majority of his conversations primarily center around the National Football League (NFL) and college football with mentions of recent topics from Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Basketball Association (NBA). He also has a featured segment, Spanning the Globe, during Sunday morning's SportsCenter special edition.

Cowherd, along with Michelle Beadle, co-hosts SportsNation; the show debuted on July 6, 2009, on ESPN2.

[edit] ESPN Radio Podcasts

• The Thundering Herd with Colin Cowherd
• The Herd Mentality

[edit] Controversies on The Herd

• Eddie Guerrero's Death - In November 2005, Cowherd was criticized by former ESPN ombudsman, George Solomon for his treatment of the death of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) wrestler Eddie Guerrero. Colin was quoted as saying "he passed away doing steroids", implying that Guerrero's death had been caused by steroid use. According to Dr. Kathryn Berg, the assistant chief medical examiner for Hennepin County in Minnesota, the autopsy showed that Guerrero died from a hardening and narrowing of the arteries that supply blood and oxygen to the heart.^[2]

• Using Un-attributed Material - In March 2006, Cowherd was criticized for using a joke on his show that was posted on the "M Zone", a University of Michigan fan blog without crediting it.^[3] Cowherd later apologized on-air and gave the M Zone full credit for the material. The M Zone response: "He was very cool about everything. This incident is now resolved and over."

• The Herd Knocks Blog Offline - On April 5, 2007, listeners of The Herd knocked The Big Lead blog site offline. Cowherd directed his listeners to access the web site home page simultaneously which resulted in a massive increase in traffic. The blog site's servers were not capable of handling so many users at one time so the site was knocked off-line for approximately 96 hours. ESPN's new Ombudsman, Le Anne Schreiber wrote an article sharing her (negative) opinion of Cowherd's actions. Schreiber contacted Traug Keller, a Senior Vice President at ESPN Radio, and Keller indicated that Cowherd would face no disciplinary action for the stunt, because there had been no policy against such a tactic at the time. To prevent this from happening again, Keller instituted a zero tolerance policy of such activities in the future.^[4]

• Sean Taylor's Murder - Cowherd was criticized for comments made regarding the circumstances surrounding Sean Taylor's death. On November 28, 2007, one day after Taylor's home invasion murder, Cowherd claimed that Taylor's past had brought this upon himself, and that Redskins fans who mourned him were not "grown ups." Cowherd stated about Taylor's turnaround;"Well, yeah, just because you clean the rug doesn't mean you got everything out. Sometimes you've got stains, stuff so deep it never ever leaves." Taylor's death was later found to be the result of a botched robbery, and the robbers hadn't known Taylor was home when they entered. ^[5]

[edit] Awards

• Sports Illustrated's 2005 Radio Personality of the year.^[6]
• Nevada's Sportscaster of the Year five times, as voted by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.^[7]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Herd with Colin Cowherd on ESPN Radio
• The Herds Word
• Colin Cowherd at the Internet Movie Database