Colin Cowherd looked at his wife and said, ”Ann, I’m in big trouble.”
They were out to dinner at one of their favorite spots, Manhattan Beach’s Slay Steak & Fish House, the night before the Super Bowl last month.
Cowherd couldn’t breathe out of the right side of his lungs. He said it felt like “somebody stabbed me.” Cowherd happened to have a buddy, restauranteur Mike Zislis, who is on the board of nearby Torrance Memorial Medical Center. He reached out to Zislis.
Within minutes, Zislis picked up Cowherd. They blew through some red lights and a little more than 10 minutes later Cowherd was on morphine in an emergency room.
After an hour passed in his hospital bed, Cowherd asked again, “What is going on with me here? Am I in trouble?”
Doctors tested him twice for COVID-19. Both were negative.
“It was an unprovoked pulmonary embolism,” Cowherd told The Post. “People can die of blood clots.”
Cowherd, 57, has had 16 blood tests and the root of the issue is not known.
Cowherd has always been active — running, lifting and playing tennis — to the point one of his daughters laughs at him, saying, “Dad, you are too productive. Go watch a movie.”
After the Super Bowl, Cowherd ended up missing his Fox Sports TV/radio show for two days. He said he never thought about his own mortality before. The incident, he said, has changed him.
“All of sudden, you are like, ‘I have to appreciate the moment more.’ I’ve never been very good at that. I always have some vision I want to do or something I want to accomplish,” Cowherd said. “My wife always says that, ‘I think I need to enjoy the moment more.’ You look at things a little differently. As you age, you get more thoughtful. I would say I think about things just a little differently. I know this sounds dramatic, you do kind of. I know people have gone through situations that are far worse.”
Cowherd is not really cutting back work-wise as — to go along with his TV/radio show, his NFL TV pregame work and his various business ventures, including his restaurant (The Herd) with Zislis — he recently started his own podcast network, The Volume.
He is doing better. He has upped his water intake and cut down on his caffeine. He is back exercising, including briskly walking an hour every afternoon.
“I pause a few times a day and really appreciate the people I’m around and the people who have helped me,” Cowherd said. “It makes me have a little different lens than maybe I had a month ago.”
DAZN’s new boss
John Skipper is out and Kevin Mayer is in atop DAZN, the direct-to-consumer subscription sports platform. Skipper’s departure was anticipated since he announced that he would start a content company with Dan Le Batard. The moves are probably a better fit for everyone. Mayer was long rumored to be a potential successor to Bob Iger at Disney.
However, instead he left for a short run with TikTok, where he was in the middle of then President Trump’s kerfuffle with the China-based platform. At Disney, Mayer was known as a dealmaker. Skipper, since his days running ESPN, has done a lot of contracts with leagues and personnel over the years, and many didn’t end up for the side he was representing. So focusing more on content may be for the better.
Clicker books
Papa Clicker says that you do not have to be a Sonics fan to enjoy Jon Finkel’s “Hoops Heist: Seattle, the Sonics and How a Stolen Team’s Legacy Gave Rise to the NBA’s Secret Empire.” The book begins with the Sonics’ entry as an expansion team followed by trips to the NBA Finals (winning in 1979) and its relocation to Oklahoma City in 2008. Finkel receives 4.3 out of 5 clickers.
