With an Irish limb on his family tree, Mike Moran knew all about limericks and how funny they can be.
But in 1968, as he prepared his first football press release as the newly hired sports information director at the University of Colorado, there wasn’t time to think about limericks. He was following in the footsteps of Fred Casotti, an icon in the sports information business, and the football coach was Eddie Crowder, who Moran knew would demand accurate information released to the media.
“After I sent out the release, I got a bunch of phone calls from the media asking, ‘Where were the limericks?’ ” Moran said. “Fred Casotti always put a couple of limericks at the top of his press releases.”
Moran not only survived the limerick omission, but over the next 40 years, he has become a Colorado sports icon in his own right. He promoted CU’s teams and athletes for 10 years, then moved to similar responsibilities for the United States Olympic Committee in Colorado Springs and is ending his professional career promoting the activities of the Colorado Springs Sports Corp.
“My work was my identity,” Moran said. “With the people I’ve met, the things I’ve seen and done, my cup is full. I was stunned when I got the job at Colorado. It was a dream job, but I had been the sports information director at the University of Omaha (now Nebraska-Omaha) for just two years at the time, and I didn’t think anyone at CU knew anything about me.”
Moran’s time at CU was filled with some of the most magical names and memorable games in its sports history.
“Our 1971 (football) season was remarkable,” Moran said. “We beat LSU and Ohio State on the road and finished ranked third in the country. The year before, we beat Penn State 41-13 and ended its 31-game (unbeaten) streak.”
The associations were life-rewarding. Crowder’s death last week closed a chapter. Casotti and basketball coach Sox Walseth also have died. But track coach Don Meyers, baseball coach Irv Brown and trainer Monte Smith are around.
“I got to see the best of the Buffs when they still had baseball,” said Moran, a baseball buff. “I was there when Sox became the women’s basketball coach after he was the men’s coach. In his first game, he absent-mindedly patted one of his players on the butt when they broke the pregame huddle and then covered his eyes when he realized what he had done.”
Moran rubbed elbows with some of CU’s all-time greats. Included were John “Bad Dude” Stearns, Cliff Branch, Bobby Anderson, Cliff Meely, Jeff Knapple, Scott Wedman, Larry Brunson, Jay Howell and Dudley Mitchell, to name a few. Moran considers Dave Logan a special athlete because he went from a bowl game to a basketball game and played despite an injury.
“I remember Dave Logan telling me he wanted to be a sportscaster,” Moran said of the current voice of the Broncos.
There wasn’t a downturn in great administrators, great athletes and classic events when he joined the Olympic Committee in 1979. Don Miller, Bill Hybl, Bill Simon, Bob Kane, LeRoy Walker and Denver’s Evie Dennis were the leaders he admired.
A year later, he was at rinkside for the Miracle on Ice in the Lake Placid Olympics when the United States beat the Soviet Union. Fourteen years later, the turmoil surrounding figure skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan highlighted the Lillehammer Olympics.
“That controversy was demanding and interesting,” Moran said. “It had us going 2 4/7.”
Moran remembers having pancakes in an early breakfast with Wilma Rudolph, a heroine in Olympic sprinting, and giving the fabled Jesse Owens a tour of the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs in 1980. That same year, he endured the U.S. boycott of the Summer Games in Moscow.
He walked down the Olympic path with gold medalist Bill Toomey (a CU alumnus), Bonnie Blair and Carl Lewis, whom he considers to be incomparable.
Moran is practicing an anticipated move to Maine. He has allotted six weeks of practice time.
“I’ve enjoyed my time in Colorado,” he said. “But today I went sailing in the morning, I went for a walk in the afternoon and took a nap. I’m going out to dinner and will be having lobster. This is the life.”
Mike Moran bio
Born: Jan. 2, 1942, in Omaha
High School: Westside, in Omaha
College: University of Omaha
Family: Brother Jim
Hobby: Writing memoirs
Ambitions: Move to Maine, get a female yellow Lab puppy and finish the show together.
