Anyone who knows Irv Brown just a little bit would understand why he is looking ahead to retirement years with apprehension.
The Irv Brown they know had an amazing career over the last 60 years that was nonstop and varied from coaching to basketball officiating to being a radio personality. He moved freely from one stage of his life to another, with sports the common thread.
But now there’s a new challenge.
“Sure, it’s scary,” Brown said last week. “I don’t know if I’ll have enough to do. I could get a high school coaching job, but I can’t stand for any length of time.”
He voiced his concern about adapting to a slower life two days before his final day on “The Irv and Joe Show” with longtime co-host Joe Williams.
A sizable group of fans came to a downtown restaurant to hear Brown sign off from the sports-talk show that has been a fixture for Denver audiences for 40 years. He leaves the programming at Mile High Sports radio.
Brown signed off saying: “This is Irv Brown. You (the audience) make the show. Good night.”
“It’s time,” Brown said of his decision to retire. He is 81 years old and having difficulty recovering fully from back surgery.
“Our show has been cut down to an hour, and I haven’t been given the clearance to drive after the surgery. It was tough getting to where I had to go,” he said.
Brown’s career made him one of the best known and accomplished sports figures in the Denver area. Sports Illustrated once ranked him among the top 50 sportsmen in Colorado.
“I always wanted to be a coach,” Brown said.
He formed that desire during his playing days at Denver’s North High School, where he earned seven letters, and at Colorado State College in Greeley, now the University of Northern Colorado, where he played on a College World Series team.
He coached baseball, football and basketball at Arvada High School. He continued at the University of Colorado as the head coach in baseball and an assistant coach in football. He also started and coached the baseball program at Metro State.
“Coaches weren’t paid very well in those days, and I had to start something else,” Brown said.
He tried fundraising for CU but didn’t last into the Chuck Fairbanks football coaching era.
Then it was on to officiating college basketball and a transition to the media. One of his first jobs in the media was with the fledgling ESPN network.
“Officiating college basketball was the most challenging thing I did,” Brown said. “But I also had a lot of fun.”
Brown officiated six NCAA Tournament championship games.
Brown also had time for the youngsters in the Denver area. In conjunction with a Nuggets program, he estimates he visited 100 schools each year and conducted a clinic on how to play basketball.
“It was popular,” he said. “It was free.”
Brown could fill his retirement hours with stories from his career. And he could start with this: UTEP basketball coach Don Haskins and Brown had ongoing barbs for each other. After the Miners lost a home game in El Paso that Brown officiated, creating an unfriendly crowd, he remembers Haskins saying, “You called a good game, but I want to see how you’re going to get out of here.”
Brown had all the answers when convincing Metro State it should add a baseball program to its athletic department. Told the Division II school in Denver had nothing to offer for baseball, including a field, Brown said, “I told them we’d play all our games on the road and I’d find a practice field. I told them I’d even get some uniforms.”
Basketball coaches Bob Knight of Indiana and John Wooden of UCLA were different personalities. After officiating an NCAA championship game, Brown remembers Knight saying to him, ” ‘Did you take too many baseballs in the head without wearing a helmet?’ All Wooden wanted to talk about was baseball.”
Irv Moss: 303-954-1296, imoss@denverpost.com or @irvmoss
