McGuire, Enberg quill pointed joke
‘Porcupines’ provide laughs
There is no such university as Wyoming State, but those who spent time with former Marquette basketball coach Al McGuire and Hall of Fame broadcaster Dick Enberg were never quite sure.
McGuire often traveled to Wyoming to decompress at Red Rock Ranch, owned by friend and former Sen. Herb Kohl. Enberg was fortunate to spend time there as an invited guest of McGuire, and recalled the day the two “founded” Wyoming State.
“We’re sitting there having a beer and a sandwich (on a break from a horseback ride),” Enberg said. “Al says, ‘I know every nickname of every college in the country.’ I tell him, ‘No way’ and then I lob him a couple of softballs – Alabama and Michigan – and he says, ‘Crimson Tide’ and ‘Wolverines.'
“Then I say, ‘Wyoming State.’ He says, ‘I know, it’s some kind of cat. A puma or something.’ I laugh and say, ‘There is no Wyoming State!’
“So, that’s how we created Wyoming State. We had to have a nickname, so we came up with the Fighting Porcupines. We came up with school colors, and said the campus would be in Kelly, Wyoming. Kelly is a tiny town with a general store and post office combined, and maybe 10 tepees. That’s our campus.”
As fellow broadcasters of college basketball for NBC, Enberg and McGuire soon took that inside joke to the national stage.
“The season comes and NBC said it wanted its own top 20 (national rankings),” Enberg recalled. “At halftime, we’d have the top college teams and we’d say, ‘Look, we have a new entry at No. 17 – Wyoming State. They haven’t lost in three years out there.
“It went on like that the whole season. A guy from the (Chicago) Tribune wanted to go out to Kelly and do interviews. We had T-shirts that said ‘Fighting Porcupines.’ We had such great fun with that.”
Enberg was so enamored with the life of the legendary Marquette coach that he wrote a one-man play, “McGuire,” that is playing at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. It stars Anthony Crivello, a Tony Award winner and Marquette graduate who was elected to the Alumni Hall of Fame in 1995.
Enberg said McGuire created such rich material for the play that he actually had to pick and choose which elements would make the cut.
“We hear the expression, ‘Bigger than life,’ ” Enberg said. “He really was. And even in death now, he still is.”