August 26, 2025 • 9 mins
America's first college fan newspaper The Cat's Pause launched in 1975 by newspaper writer/owner Oscaar Combs.
The Big O jumped on the phone with Terry to discuss the early days of the paper that changed the way fans were connected to their favorite university's sports teams.
More tomorrow with Tom Leach on THE LEACH REPORT, 8-9 AM on Sportstalk 790 Louisville. Oscar Combs and Darrell Bird will spend the entire hour with the voice of the Kentucky Wildcats.
The Big O jumped on the phone with Terry to discuss the early days of the paper that changed the way fans were connected to their favorite university's sports teams.
More tomorrow with Tom Leach on THE LEACH REPORT, 8-9 AM on Sportstalk 790 Louisville. Oscar Combs and Darrell Bird will spend the entire hour with the voice of the Kentucky Wildcats.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm one of fourteen kids, so my parents hardly knew
I was gone. But I did move off to the
University of Kentucky around this time of year in nineteen
seventy five, and there was something new in town, a
new publication called The Cat's Pause. The founder, the guy
who kind of started the whole notion of fan newspapers,
(00:22):
is with us.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
That's Oscar Combs. Welcome back, big Oh good have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Good to be with you, Terry. A great day today,
beautiful out there.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Oh my goodness. Every fall, yeah, well, it's exciting when
all these things start up, you know, the season starts
up again, the new school year, all that. But you
had an idea. You'd been a newspaper guy already. So
tell us how you put together the concept of The
Cat's Pause.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Well it's a long story. I'll a breavate it, and
you you've heard it foreign private discussions. But you know
what we tend to forget. I tend forget what happened
just before I started this, and that was the national
chef inmptonship that was supposed to happen between Vinny Crumb
and joe By Hall that didn't happen three four months
(01:07):
earlier nineteen sixty seven. Said yeah, But anyway, all this
sort of started in nineteen seventy six. I went to
the NIT now I moved down in nineteenth. In nineteen
seventy five and went to New York to an NIT
game and got talking with three guys who said they
(01:30):
followed Kentucky in I was sort of interesting what their
background was, where they were from here. They said they'd
never been to Kentucky before in their life, but they
had followed Kentucky basketball by w h A s on
radio back to the late forties. And I'd already been
thinking about starting a publication, but I just wasn't sure
(01:53):
how well it would be received outside Kentucky. And boy
was I wrong, because they it was when more important
to people there than inside Kentucky, because they had no
way of getting information on Kentucky. If you lived in
Lewis Court, Maine, or in Albany, New York, or in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
How long did it take you to realize you could
make a living at this?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well. I saw my newspaper in Hazard and had a
little bit of money saved up. I really thought it
was a lot of money, but it turned out to
be a whole lot of money. It's time coming along,
and I guess it was about the third year that
I really hey, this thing's going to work. I made
a commitment when I started I was going to stay
(02:41):
with it for two years, thicker thin, and there were
a lot of people out there didn't think it would
make it two or three months, particularly some of the
mainstream media locally, like, well, you'll be gone in six months, definitely,
not a year. And I'm in stubborn hillbilly. You know.
My greatest compliment my life is when I met Barry
(03:02):
Beingham senior and junior while applying for a job with
the Loyal Times back in nineteen sixty seven, and Barry
Beingham Senior said, son says, you work and you'll make
a good living, and you'll get heady. If you don't work,
you won't And I'd just taken an aptitude test for
(03:24):
the job. And when I was having a letch with
Earlcox and Verry Senior, very junior, Jim Awsoenball, I think
there were six of them, and when I left, he said,
how do you do on your test? I said, I
gave it my best shot. He said, well, I says,
(03:44):
you know, you start out with a plus five. Wore
they started great here And I looked then, like, what
do you mean? And he said, anybody at Plass for
a job at the Curry churn On, if they live
east of Lexingan, they start out with a plus five
on their pitched. I thought that was neat wow.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
But you learned some valuable lessons along the way, and
then you kept writing this wave of the cat's paws
and people realized what a great idea this was, so
other schools started copying you, didn't they or.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Other people in the they were close to sixty at
one time. A lot of them fell by the wayside.
Most of them didn't have any experience in publishing a
newspaper or a magazine, so they got beat up in
the financial where a one friend of mine, he worked
in Louisville for a fire section named Paul Borden, was
(04:40):
a sports writer and he had later moved to Arkansas
and was working for a paper there. In one of
the Arkansas boosters said hey, I'll put the money start
one here. He put out the first issue and sent
me a copy and it was beautiful and a week
lay to come and he said, well, I'm out a
job looking for another job. And I said, what happened, Paul?
(05:02):
He said, well, the guy that would financially called up
and said he couldn't afford the printing bell. And I said,
how much is a printing bill back then? Is you know,
four or five hundred dollars for a magazine like care.
He said it was nine eight hundred dollars. Wow, I
said ten thousand dollars and he said yeah. I said, well,
(05:22):
and that's what happened to a lot of them that
fell by the wayside. They had no idea about what
it took the financial publication.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I know you stay in touch with things that are
going on with UK right now. Talk about what you've
seen with Mark Pope and the energy that he's brought
to this basketball team.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Well, you know, you wake up some nights in the morning,
you wake up some night in the middle of the
night of the night, and you think it is this
guy for real? Well, I know it's for real because
I got to know him very very well when he
was here for three years back in the nineties, and
he is the real deal. My only concervative Mark going
(06:00):
forward is there's going to come a time that he's
not going to have the time that he spends now
going border to border in the state, building relationships, making
feel good stories for young kids. But all those things
are great, but at some point in time he's going
to be fighting against coaches that's not doing those things,
(06:21):
who's spending one hundred percent on just getting the team
together and making them better. But I applauded for what
he's doing. I'm a great believer in it. And whether
it works out or all, you know, time will tell.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I have loved some of those stories where the guy
walks up the arena steps and goes to visit with
someone in a wheelchair. I mean, he's a very thoughtful person.
But I too remember him from the nineties. He's the
same guy he was then. He hasn't changed a lick.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
You're absolutely right. I can remember back and I've told
this story a couple of times. When he first came
over the year he was sending out as a trencher.
I can remember him and Jeff Sheppard coming over to
our church, Emmanual Baptist Church on a Wednesday evening speaking
to a youth group, and nobody pushed him or anything
(07:07):
and boy, the top that those two gave to the
kids that day made me a believer in both of them.
And I'll tell you what, thirty years later, they're just
like they were there.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
They are they are indeed all right. Well, we're going
to run out of time here, but I know people
can tune in tomorrow morning to Tom Leech's show and
you're going to spend an extensive amount of time with
Tom Leach through that hour eight to nine AM. That's
on our sister station seven ninety here in Louisville. The
Leech reports the name of the show, So we're looking
forward to hearing you celebrate the cat's pause and build
(07:38):
some more bricks of the story.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Well, Darrylbert will be with me, and Darryl's running the
last twenty five years, done a great job, and of
course Tom can be the ultimate referee. That we will
have a great time. I hope everyone can en show
it with us. Well.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I enjoyed having a meal with you a few months ago.
We got to do that again soon.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
We are planning on that very short It keeps your
schedule open.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
It's always open for you. Oscar. Are you still there, Yes, sir,
I'm here. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you dropped off
there all of a sudden. Yeah, we're looking forward to it.
We'll do that, and looking forward to this season. I
had here football and everything all ahead is going to
be a ball.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So all right, thanks Corner, big greatful both Kentucky and low.
I'm looking for a wait.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
It's the best time of year for this stuff. All right.
All dreams are on the table for sure. Thanks Oscar, Yes, sir, anytime,
Kerry appreciate you. Oscar Combs, founder of the Cat's Paws,
often imitated throughout America. But the Cat's Pause itself lives
on Darryl Bird, as he noted, has carried it on
for the last quarter century. But Oscar is a great
sports writer and a friend to media all throughout the
(08:47):
commonwealth of Kentucky. You can hear him tomorrow morning with
Tom Leach eight till nine a m. And that is
on our sister station on seven ninety so listen in
and we're back in a minute here on news radio.
Wait forty uh sm
I'm one of fourteen kids, so my parents hardly knew
I was gone. But I did move off to the
University of Kentucky around this time of year in nineteen
seventy five, and there was something new in town, a
new publication called The Cat's Pause. The founder, the guy
who kind of started the whole notion of fan newspapers,
(00:22):
is with us.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
That's Oscar Combs. Welcome back, big Oh good have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Good to be with you, Terry. A great day today,
beautiful out there.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Oh my goodness. Every fall, yeah, well, it's exciting when
all these things start up, you know, the season starts
up again, the new school year, all that. But you
had an idea. You'd been a newspaper guy already. So
tell us how you put together the concept of The
Cat's Pause.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Well it's a long story. I'll a breavate it, and
you you've heard it foreign private discussions. But you know
what we tend to forget. I tend forget what happened
just before I started this, and that was the national
chef inmptonship that was supposed to happen between Vinny Crumb
and joe By Hall that didn't happen three four months
(01:07):
earlier nineteen sixty seven. Said yeah, But anyway, all this
sort of started in nineteen seventy six. I went to
the NIT now I moved down in nineteenth. In nineteen
seventy five and went to New York to an NIT
game and got talking with three guys who said they
(01:30):
followed Kentucky in I was sort of interesting what their
background was, where they were from here. They said they'd
never been to Kentucky before in their life, but they
had followed Kentucky basketball by w h A s on
radio back to the late forties. And I'd already been
thinking about starting a publication, but I just wasn't sure
(01:53):
how well it would be received outside Kentucky. And boy
was I wrong, because they it was when more important
to people there than inside Kentucky, because they had no
way of getting information on Kentucky. If you lived in
Lewis Court, Maine, or in Albany, New York, or in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
How long did it take you to realize you could
make a living at this?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well. I saw my newspaper in Hazard and had a
little bit of money saved up. I really thought it
was a lot of money, but it turned out to
be a whole lot of money. It's time coming along,
and I guess it was about the third year that
I really hey, this thing's going to work. I made
a commitment when I started I was going to stay
(02:41):
with it for two years, thicker thin, and there were
a lot of people out there didn't think it would
make it two or three months, particularly some of the
mainstream media locally, like, well, you'll be gone in six months, definitely,
not a year. And I'm in stubborn hillbilly. You know.
My greatest compliment my life is when I met Barry
(03:02):
Beingham senior and junior while applying for a job with
the Loyal Times back in nineteen sixty seven, and Barry
Beingham Senior said, son says, you work and you'll make
a good living, and you'll get heady. If you don't work,
you won't And I'd just taken an aptitude test for
(03:24):
the job. And when I was having a letch with
Earlcox and Verry Senior, very junior, Jim Awsoenball, I think
there were six of them, and when I left, he said,
how do you do on your test? I said, I
gave it my best shot. He said, well, I says,
(03:44):
you know, you start out with a plus five. Wore
they started great here And I looked then, like, what
do you mean? And he said, anybody at Plass for
a job at the Curry churn On, if they live
east of Lexingan, they start out with a plus five
on their pitched. I thought that was neat wow.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
But you learned some valuable lessons along the way, and
then you kept writing this wave of the cat's paws
and people realized what a great idea this was, so
other schools started copying you, didn't they or.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Other people in the they were close to sixty at
one time. A lot of them fell by the wayside.
Most of them didn't have any experience in publishing a
newspaper or a magazine, so they got beat up in
the financial where a one friend of mine, he worked
in Louisville for a fire section named Paul Borden, was
(04:40):
a sports writer and he had later moved to Arkansas
and was working for a paper there. In one of
the Arkansas boosters said hey, I'll put the money start
one here. He put out the first issue and sent
me a copy and it was beautiful and a week
lay to come and he said, well, I'm out a
job looking for another job. And I said, what happened, Paul?
(05:02):
He said, well, the guy that would financially called up
and said he couldn't afford the printing bell. And I said,
how much is a printing bill back then? Is you know,
four or five hundred dollars for a magazine like care.
He said it was nine eight hundred dollars. Wow, I
said ten thousand dollars and he said yeah. I said, well,
(05:22):
and that's what happened to a lot of them that
fell by the wayside. They had no idea about what
it took the financial publication.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
I know you stay in touch with things that are
going on with UK right now. Talk about what you've
seen with Mark Pope and the energy that he's brought
to this basketball team.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Well, you know, you wake up some nights in the morning,
you wake up some night in the middle of the
night of the night, and you think it is this
guy for real? Well, I know it's for real because
I got to know him very very well when he
was here for three years back in the nineties, and
he is the real deal. My only concervative Mark going
(06:00):
forward is there's going to come a time that he's
not going to have the time that he spends now
going border to border in the state, building relationships, making
feel good stories for young kids. But all those things
are great, but at some point in time he's going
to be fighting against coaches that's not doing those things,
(06:21):
who's spending one hundred percent on just getting the team
together and making them better. But I applauded for what
he's doing. I'm a great believer in it. And whether
it works out or all, you know, time will tell.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I have loved some of those stories where the guy
walks up the arena steps and goes to visit with
someone in a wheelchair. I mean, he's a very thoughtful person.
But I too remember him from the nineties. He's the
same guy he was then. He hasn't changed a lick.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
You're absolutely right. I can remember back and I've told
this story a couple of times. When he first came
over the year he was sending out as a trencher.
I can remember him and Jeff Sheppard coming over to
our church, Emmanual Baptist Church on a Wednesday evening speaking
to a youth group, and nobody pushed him or anything
(07:07):
and boy, the top that those two gave to the
kids that day made me a believer in both of them.
And I'll tell you what, thirty years later, they're just
like they were there.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
They are they are indeed all right. Well, we're going
to run out of time here, but I know people
can tune in tomorrow morning to Tom Leech's show and
you're going to spend an extensive amount of time with
Tom Leach through that hour eight to nine AM. That's
on our sister station seven ninety here in Louisville. The
Leech reports the name of the show, So we're looking
forward to hearing you celebrate the cat's pause and build
(07:38):
some more bricks of the story.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Well, Darrylbert will be with me, and Darryl's running the
last twenty five years, done a great job, and of
course Tom can be the ultimate referee. That we will
have a great time. I hope everyone can en show
it with us. Well.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
I enjoyed having a meal with you a few months ago.
We got to do that again soon.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
We are planning on that very short It keeps your
schedule open.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
It's always open for you. Oscar. Are you still there, Yes, sir,
I'm here. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you dropped off
there all of a sudden. Yeah, we're looking forward to it.
We'll do that, and looking forward to this season. I
had here football and everything all ahead is going to
be a ball.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So all right, thanks Corner, big greatful both Kentucky and low.
I'm looking for a wait.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
It's the best time of year for this stuff. All right.
All dreams are on the table for sure. Thanks Oscar, Yes, sir, anytime,
Kerry appreciate you. Oscar Combs, founder of the Cat's Paws,
often imitated throughout America. But the Cat's Pause itself lives
on Darryl Bird, as he noted, has carried it on
for the last quarter century. But Oscar is a great
sports writer and a friend to media all throughout the
(08:47):
commonwealth of Kentucky. You can hear him tomorrow morning with
Tom Leach eight till nine a m. And that is
on our sister station on seven ninety so listen in
and we're back in a minute here on news radio.
Wait forty uh sm
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