From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tim Cowlishaw is a national sportswriter for The Dallas Morning News, a regular panelist on the ESPN sports talk show Around the Horn, and the lead reporter for the ESPN2 racing show NASCAR Now.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 2.1 Around the Horn 2.2 NASCAR Now 2.3 Controversial remarks 3 References 4 External Links

Cowlishaw was raised in Dallas and grew up with the local sports teams. He began going to Dallas Cowboys games in 1963, Texas Rangers games in 1972, and Dallas Mavericks games in 1980. He graduated from Richardson High School in 1973 and in 1978 he graduated from the University of Texas in Austin with a degree in communications.

Tim Cowlishaw has been with the Dallas Morning News since 1984 and has been a sports columnist at the newspaper since August 2, 1998, but before joining The Dallas Morning News, he wrote for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the Daily Oklahoman and the San Jose Mercury News. While at The Dallas Morning News, Cowlishaw covered SMU athletics, college basketball, major league baseball, the Dallas Cowboys, as well as the Dallas Stars before he became a columnist.

In 2002, Cowlishaw placed in the top five sports columnists of the nation among large circulation newspapers by the Associated Press Sports Editors.

Cowlishaw can be seen regularly on ESPN's Around the Horn, along with former fellow sportswriter from The Dallas Morning News, Kevin Blackistone. Cowlishaw has been a panelist on the show since 2002 and host Tony Reali frequently introduces him at the beginning of episodes as "Texas Tim" Cowlishaw. Being known for his signature goatee, it is rare that he will sport a "clean" look, though it has happened, as was evidenced in a handful of episodes. Cowlishaw often reminds Reali of previous successful predictions, typically of recent athletic events previously discussed, in the hope of getting additional scoring points. This always results in Reali saying "self-promotion is the mating call of the mute button" and deducting points from Cowlishaw's score. The other panelists often poke fun at the fact that ice hockey and NASCAR are Cowlishaw's favorite sports and it is rare that those two sports come up as topics on the show. He also likes talking about the BCS whenever he can. When Cowlishaw wins the showdown and gets 30 seconds at the end of the show to expound on any subject, he will typically discuss neglected ice hockey topics. This is greeted with snores by the other panelists and with Reali pretending to read the newspaper while wondering aloud why he let Cowlishaw win the showdown in the first place. Additionally, Cowlishaw often wears an LSU Tigers tie on the show and refers to LSU as "my LSU Tigers," although as a Dallas native, his connection to LSU has never been explained. On Friday, January 26, 2007, Cowlishaw celebrated his 100th win on Around the Horn. He is the 3rd panelist to achieve that plateau (Woody Paige, Jay Mariotti).

Cowlishaw has been the lead reporter on another ESPN family program since February 2007, NASCAR Now. It remains to be seen how much this will cut into his time on Around the Horn, but now that he reports for a show specifically about NASCAR racing, Cowlishaw will have to devote more time to a second television job that will require more attention.

In a column which appeared on June 11, 2006, Cowlishaw disparaged the Miami Heat as "unworthy opponents" of the Dallas Mavericks in the 2006 NBA Finals. ^[1] After the Heat defeated Dallas in six games, Heat guard and series MVP Dwyane Wade claimed that the column had stunned him and his teammates, and that he "kept [that column] in mind." ^[2].

As a result of Cowlishaw's failed prediction that the Miami Heat would be easily defeated by the Dallas Mavericks, the sportswriter received a significant amount of correspondence from Miami Heat fans worldwide "wanting retractions" while "also [giving Cowlishaw] credit for lifting their team." ^[3] While Cowlishaw has admitted that he made a premature and unwarranted assumption, he has failed to give the Miami Heat credit for their defeat of the Mavericks. Instead, Cowlishaw attributes Dallas' failures to lack of execution, not the Heat's superiority. As he stated, "The Mavericks let Miami off the hook in Game 3, and the Heat responded. It's funny how we take the results, though, and dissect why Wade was so fantastic, why the Mavericks were so flawed, etc. The bottom line is that if Jason Terry went 9-for-25 in Game 6, we would have watched a Game 7 on Thursday (June 26, 2006)." ^[4]

1. ^ "Unworthy Opponent No Match for Mavericks" by Tim Cowlishaw June 10, 2006. Accessed December 6, 2006.
2. ^ LA Times Column Link inactive December 6, 2006
3. ^ "Quick Take: Taking Heat for Bad Prediction" by Tim Cowlishaw June 26, 2006. Accessed December 6, 2006.
4. ^ "Quick Take: Taking Heat for Bad Prediction by Tim Cowlishaw June 26, 2006. Accessed December 6, 2006.

Cowlishaw's column at DallasNews.com