Years ago, the documentary arm of PBS dispatched a camera crew during the college basketball season to do a piece on the troubles of Jerry Tarkanian at Fresno State.
Was he really Father Flanagan?
Or something less altruistic?
FRONTLINE mic’d me up for the project. They pitched it as a story about the challenges of covering a controversial Hall of Fame basketball coach in a small market. But really, they were into Tark.
He was a lightning rod who had recruited a pile of sure-fire NBA talent but had been repeatedly sucked down by the underbelly of his sport. It was a wild time. His son, Danny, was an assistant on the team. Tark’s childhood friend, a gentle guy named Stan, drove the coach around town like a chauffeur.
There was a line of characters from Tark’s UNLV days in the 1990s who would fly in from Las Vegas, shirts unbuttoned, chest-hair peeking out, heavy on the cologne, to observe practices. It was rich material.