Canzano: Where have all the letters gone?
Coaches may hate this column.
I have to admit that receiving a handwritten letter in the mail from Jerry Tarkanian was a delight years ago. I was covering his basketball team at Fresno State at the time.
I’d written a harsh column about Tark’s team. It was underperforming on the court. It was worse in the classroom. At a practice, I was interviewing him, taking notes on a notepad, and I asked whether Tark thought all his players would be academically eligible.
“I’m not a magician,” he muttered.
I used the quote in print. A letter signed by Tark arrived in the mail three days later and declared that he would not speak to me again outside of formal news conferences. The letter, he wrote, was his final 1-on-1 communication.
I did not write back. I filed the letter away alongside a second letter, also signed by Tark, that was dated five weeks earlier. In that note, he’d also declared that he would never speak with me again.
Of course, we always spoke again. Years later, when I saw the Hall of Fame coach, he greeted me warmly. I said, “I haven’t received a letter from you in a while.”
Tark didn’t flinch.
“I shoulda been a mime with you,” he said.
Can you imagine Oregon coach Dan Lanning sending me a handwritten letter? Oregon State’s JaMarcus Shephard? Washington’s Jedd Fisch? Or WSU’s Kirby Moore? What I’m saying is, letter writing is a lost art. Nobody does it anymore. These college coaches prefer text or a direct message on social media.
I did receive a late-night phone call from Mario Cristobal during the 2021 regular season. Oregon had just whipped UW at Husky Stadium in a big game that kicked off after dark. After the victory, an emotional Cristobal went on a rant in the visiting locker room, roasting Washington.
“Those f—king guys right there, they represent everything that’s wrong with football,” he barked to his team. “So when you kick their ass, you let them know it.”
I included his rant in my column, packed up my stuff in the press box, and headed back to the hotel. I had just gone lights out and settled into bed around 1 a.m., when Cristobal called me, upset.