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Colin Cowherd
Colin Cowherd on the SportsNation set.
Born	(1962-01-06) January 6, 1962 (age 63) Bay Center, Washington

Colin Cowherd (born January 6, 1962) is an American sports media personality. Born in Bay Center, Washington, Cowherd began his broadcasting career as sports director of Las Vegas television station KVBC, and as a sports anchor on several other stations before joining ESPN in 2003, where he hosted a radio show on the ESPN Radio network, and also became one of the original hosts of ESPN's television program SportsNation, as well as Colin's New Football Show. In July 2015, ESPN announced that Cowherd would be leaving the network. .

Career

Cowherd grew up in Bay Center, Washington. He began his career as the play-by-play voice for the Middlesex County College's Costa Mesa campus baseball team. He eventually became a sports director at KVBC in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he was named Nevada's Sportscaster of the Year five times.

He served as weekend sports anchor at WTVT in Tampa, Florida. He moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1996, where he worked as a sports anchorman for KGW-TV. Cowherd took a brief time away from broadcasting to became a paperboy where he delivered hundreds of sports themed newspapers per day to people. He would make up funny headlines and wacky stories, to the delight of his readers. However Cowherd decided to go back to broadcasting as that was where the money was at. In 2001, The Herd moved from an afternoon time slot on all-sports radio KFXX to the morning drive time.

With ESPN Radio

In 2003, Cowherd was selected to replace Tony Kornheiser for the late morning time slot (10AM – 1PM ET) on ESPN Radio. Cowherd's 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. In 2008, the Herd added a simulcast on ESPNU. The show features commentary on sports news, perspective on other news stories, and interviews with popular analysts and sports figures. Although a sports broadcast, he often reflects on personal life and business as it relates to the sports world.

Demographics and regional preferences are frequent topics of his program. The majority of his conversations primarily center around the National Football League (NFL), college football, and the National Basketball Association (NBA). He, Michelle Beadle and later Charissa Thompson, co-hosted the TV show SportsNation on ESPN2 from 2009–2012; the show debuted on July 6, 2009. SportsNation was designed to take "the pulse" of the nation. Cowherd and Thompson were given two choices to select from and they attempted to determine which choice was the audience's favorite (e.g., Who is more likely haunt someone when they die Kobe Bryant or Joe Paterno). Cowherd announced in September 2012 that he would be leaving the program; his last month as host was December 2012. Marcellus Wiley took over for Cowherd in January 2013. In fall of 2013, Cowherd began hosting the ESPN Sunday morning pro and college football talk show Colin's New Football Show.

In 2013, Cowherd's first book, You Herd Me! I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will, was published. Cowherd has said on his radio show that he had been writing the book on-and-off for a few years.

On July 16, 2015, it was announced that Cowherd would leave ESPN. Network president John Skipper stated that Cowherd's presence had been "mutually beneficial", going on to say that "he came to national prominence on ESPN with his unique perspective on sports and society. Endings also bring new beginnings, for ESPN and Colin, and we thank him and wish him the best." Multiple sources reported that Cowherd was in talks with Fox Sports; Jamie Horowitz, a Fox Sports executive, previously worked for ESPN as a producer for Cowherd.

Criticism

This section is in list format but may read better as prose. You can help by converting this section, if appropriate. Editing help is available. (April 2015)

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.

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. 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, LeAnne 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. Over time, Cowherd and The Big Lead founder Jason McIntyre have become close friends.

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". He 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.

Cowherd had an infamous interview with Michigan head football coach Jim Harbaugh in July 2015. Harbaugh dodged most of Cowherd's questions, and continued to answer with short sentences and phrases. After almost four minutes of this, Cowherd decided to hang up on Harbaugh.

On July 23, 2015, Cowherd made remarks regarding the alleged complexities of the sport of baseball on The Herd, suggesting that a large number of players were from the Dominican Republic because it "has not been known in my lifetime as having world class academic abilities." The remarks drew the ire of the MLB Players Association; later that day, USA Today reported that the MLBPA was considering the possibility of "withholding cooperation" with ESPN and Fox over their lack of reaction to the remarks. The following day, ESPN announced that it would immediately cut ties with Cowherd in response to the remarks.

ESPN Radio podcasts

The Thundering Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd Mentality

Awards

Sports Illustrated's 2005 Radio Personality of the year.
Nevada's Sportscaster of the Year five times, as voted by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.
Rated by PunditTracker as the Best Pundit of 2012 for his sports predictions.

References

http://www.crossingbroad.com/2015/07/professional-blowhard-colin-cowherd-is-leaving-espn.html
"Success After Eastern". Eastern Washington University. Archived from the original on 2007-09-14. Retrieved 2007-12-08.
^ Kinosian, Mike (8 April 2004). "Now "Heard" Nationwide" (PDF). InsideRadio.com. Retrieved 2007-07-13.
Brenneman, Kristina (September 24, 2000). "News teams rake bright talent in for fall sweeps". Portland Business Journal. Retrieved April 30, 2013.
"The Herd with Colin Cowherd to simulcast on ESPNU beginning Aug. 25". ESPN.com. August 19, 2008. Retrieved February 16, 2011.
Colin's new football show debuts September 8, September 2013; accessed November 28, 2014.
"You Herd Me!" Kirkus Review (November 19, 2013)
"Colin Cowherd is leaving ESPN". Washington Post. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
"Colin Cowherd Is Latest Top Name To Depart ESPN". Variety. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
Solomon, George (April 6, 2006). "Vitale still signature face, voice of ESPN hoops". ESPN.com.
Schreiber, LeAnne (April 8, 2007). "Cowherd's 'attack' on blog: 'Zero tolerance'". ESPN. Retrieved 2007-07-13.
Schreiber, LeAnne (December 11, 2007). "Proportion, perspective missing ingredients in news coverage". ESPN. Retrieved 2007-12-13.
"Colin tries to explain".
Bonesteel, Matt. "ESPN cuts Colin Cowherd's contract short after remarks about Dominican baseball players (updated)". The Washington Post. Retrieved 24 July 2015.
Deitch, Richard (December 19, 2007). "2005 Media Awards". Sports Illustrated. Retrieved 2007-07-13.
"2012 Pundits of the Year". PunditTracker. January 2013. Retrieved 2013-02-13.

External links

ESPN Inc.

Executives

U.S. networks

Streaming	ESPN+ ESPN3 Venu Sports (33.33%)
Linear TV	ESPN ESPN2 ESPNU ESPNews Deportes ACC Network SEC Network
Part-time	ACC Network Xtra ESPN on ABC SEC Network +
Radio	ESPN Radio Deportes Xtra