Monthly Archives: April 2020

Let’s (L.B.) Post up: When Jerry Tarkanian took Long Beach State to its first Big Dance 50 years ago, the rebel life took hold

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By Tom Hoffarth

There is so much to love about this main photo of Jerry Tarkanian with his arm around his son, Danny, as they celebrate an NCAA tournament victory over Weber State in Utah during the first round of the 1971 West Regionals. Just look at the sweatshirt the 9-year-old Tarkanian is wearing as the team’s ballboy.

Tarkanian-Danny-w-Dad.-Ran-SI-in-1984.credit.Don-Grayston.Deseret-NewsA year earlier, Tark took this 49ers program that just entered the Division I territory and won the PCAA, then started a series of head-to-head run-ins with UCLA in the tournament that defined them as more than just a program-on-a-shoestring. They had mined the Southern California landscape for community college talent, and more.

61cPS4-o-ELAnd, thanks to a new book out by Danny Tarkanian called “Rebel With A Cause,” we find out much more about the Hall of Fame coach’s Long Beach experience — four straight NCAA appearances before he went to UNLV — and the admission that he wonders what he could have done had he stayed in Southern California.
Our latest for the Long Beach Post celebrates the 50th anniversary of Tark’s first 49ers tournament team in 1970, and the legacy that continued. Please enjoy…

Obit Tarkanian Basketball

In this Nov. 26, 2005, file photo, former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian waves to the crowd at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. Hall of Fame coach Jerry Tarkanian, who built a basketball dynasty at UNLV but was defined more by his decades-long battle with the NCAA, died Wednesday in Las Vegas after several years of health issues. He was 84.

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CTRL+ALT+DEL: A capitalistic re-direct with the Dodgers-AT&T-DirecTV PR “news flash” … details not on SportsNet LA

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By Tom Hoffarth

The story was big enough to be on the front-page of Thursday’s Los Angeles Times print edition: “Dodgers’ channel finally plays ball: TV standoff ends and games to be available in almost all of L.A.”

In a tight, one-column piece of real estate allotted to this business announcement that somehow wedged its way into everything far more life-and-death in today’s world, maybe the headline was restricted in what it could actually convey. Regardless, it rang hollow.

The online story could couch it a different way: “After six years, the Dodgers’ channel will be available in L.A. What happened?”

91333642_512922749651069_6497779441197098395_nTruth is, nothing substantial has happened.

Other than DirecTV viewers now find Dodgers’ classic reruns on the team-owned SportsNet L.A., arriving on Channel 690 for the time being. Whatever else is streaming on the AT&T  platforms is another element if you’re looking for silver linings.

Without games going on, what’s to celebrate?

More importantly, and to be accurate, is that SportsNet L.A. launched just prior to spring training for the 2014 Major League Baseball season, has been “available” for the last four-plus years throughout Los Angeles — since Charter Communications bought Time Warner Cable in May, 2015 and the combined territory covered about 90 percent of the Dodgers’ TV region.

A good many just choose not to drop one system and pick up another to get it. Many of them were DirecTV customers.

Based on years of following and reporting on this back to when the red flags came up when it announced in 2014, and with our current contacts in the business, here’s what we can conclude about all this: Read more