Every basketball writer and columnist who covered the mens’ NCAA tournament from the mid-1970s through the mid-‘90s probably has a story about Dave Cawood, who died in Louisville on July 20 after coming home from a morning jog. He was the guy you had to go through to get a tournament credential, and he got so he could recognize a phony quicker than Billy Packer could pick up a zone defense.

A native of Harlan, Ky., the same town that produced immortal 1940s Kentucky star Wallace “Wah Wah” Jones and the great play-by-play announcer Cawood Ledford (his cousin), Dave was 64 when he died. Prior to joining the NCAA in 1974, he had worked in sports information at Morehead, Eastern Kentucky, Baylor (his alma mater), SMU, and Arkansas.During Cawood’s 23-year tenure with the NCAA, the basketball tournament turned into “March Madness,” an event that owned the month and became truly national in scope. On Cawood’s watch, the Final Four moved almost exclusively into domed stadiums and CBS agreed to pay more than $1 billion for the TV rights.

Still, Cawood always felt more at home with writers and SIDs than TV personalities and marketing wizards. He tried to be fair with everyone, but he favored the folks who truly loved college sports. He always brought in his best SID buddies – guys like David Housel, Kenny Klein, Don Bryant, and Roger Valdeserri – to help him handle the press at the Final Four.

He left the NCAA in 1997 to come home, taking a job in Lexington as an executive vice-president with Host Communications. He and the company’s founder, Jim Host, had worked closely for years on various NCAA projects, including marketing, the tournament radio network, and the production of the tournament game programs.

After leaving the company in April, 2007, Cawood became president of FSA Group, an association management firm. He and his wife Sheila moved to Louisville. However, college sports remained his first love. He was a frequent visitor in the press box at UK and U of L football and basketball games.

Although Dave was a dear friend, I was unable to attend his funeral service in Harlan. However, Bill Hancock, who worked with Dave at NCAA for years, was there, and here’s what he reported to Cawood’s friends:

I had never been to Eastern Kentucky before. Harlan is a classic Appalachian town in a picturesque wooded valley. I fell in love with the place. If it were located closer to an Interstate or an airport, Ritz Carlton or Hyatt or Marriott would build an incredible resort beside the creek.

In the 90-minute drive in the rain to Harlan from Hazard, the road wound along a rocky creek in a corkscrew fashion. We passed rickety shacks, rusty double-wides and also tiny, tidy homes with carefully manicured lawns and crepe myrtle out front. At least one house had a blue and white UK flag.

We saw one “traditional” coal mine and one ugly strip mine. At one road cut, the cliff face arched over the highway, creating sort of a one-sided tunnel. We drove up switchbacks and back down, once eating web-pavement spit behind a coal truck doing about five mph.

Two people were sitting on the porch of one tiny log-sided cabin when we drove to Harlan in the morning. They were still there when we drove back that afternoon, but they had swapped chairs. (We saw a car wreck in the quaint town of Hyden–where quarterback Tim Couch grew up. In fact, the new road leading into town is named “Tim Couch Pass.”)

It was like some other world, all green and hilly. I imagined Dave leaving that “hollar” as an 18-year old and driving out to the plains of Waco–surely Texas was a shock for him but I know he got used to it fast.

We walked into the local Dairy Queen 90 minutes before the service and ran smack into Jim Host and Dave’s old friend Oscar Combs.

I will never forget the look on Sheila’s face when she saw us. She looked beautiful. There were plenty of tears and hugs and smiles at the one-hour visitation in the church before the funeral. The casket was open. Dave was thinner. Somewhat older, like all of us. I really wanted him to peer over his glasses at us one more time

Dave’s brother, Tom, told us about their childhoods. Their father was a doctor in Harlan. Actually he was physician for a coal mining company and took care of the miners and their families. They lived at the mine about 10 miles away from Harlan. Which, judging by the roads we took, must have been a long drive in the old days. We had long heard about “Cawood Mountain,” which Tom said actually is more like “Cawood small hill.”

The funeral was in the church where Dave grew up. One lady said the sanctuary and terra-cotta basement fellowship hall (with stage for performances) and classrooms had changed little from the 1940s. I found the room where I think Dave attended Sunday school (boys only, of course) as a little guy. I sat on one of the tiny chairs and imagined Dave trying to memorize Bible verses.

The local preacher (quintessential Southern Baptist) spoke. He told a story of Dave and his Baylor roommate taking the carpet from a funeral home that was being demolished. They cut it up like those vendors who cut up the Final Four floor and sold it to the guys in the dorm.

Unfortunately the carpet contained Formaldehyde and the fumes soon wafted through the dormitory. They evacuated the place but the authorities never discovered who was at fault.

(That reminded me of Dave–few people completely understood the value of everything he did. Until now, maybe.)
David Housel gave a beautiful eulogy. Housel stole the show. He said somebody had remarked that Dave had thousands of friends and then someone else gave that line about “thousands are good, but if you can have five friends you can really count on, you’re lucky.”

Housel said, “most of us are down to four today.”

Frances Ledford was at the service. She is widow of Dave’s famous broadcasting first cousin Cawood Ledford. (Their parents were brother and sister.) The Ledfords had retired to Harlan after Cawood Ledford had finished his spectacular career of broadcasting the Kentucky Wildcats’ games. One obit mentioned Dave being Cawood Ledford’s cousin in about the fifth paragraph. I thought that was far too high. Dave Cawood had plenty of other claims to fame.
(I must admit it’s hard for me to write “Dave” in this e-mail. I didn’t call him that, few of us did–it was always “Cawood.” Actually he never called me “Bill”, either. Always “Hancock.” Always.)

Jim Marchiony, Will Rudd, Alfred White, Lou Spry and I represented our former employer. A crew from the U. of Tennessee crew was there–John Painter (another NCAA ex), Bud Ford and Gus Manning. A couple of other former Host staff members were there, too. It was good to see ex-CBS exec Mark Carlson. No one else was there from CBS, and no sports writers.

We emerged from the church into a sunny afternoon with white puffy July clouds. Heading back to Hazard, we stopped for ice cream in the Hyden Dairy Queen–in honor of the guy who brought ice cream (and bracket boards, and humanity, and empathy and much more) to the world.

It was all quite remarkable. Just like Dave. No, that’s not right. It was just like Cawood.