Football, tennis, volleyball, basketball, sports casting, steroids — are all represented in this weeks sports deaths.

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Former OU star, Seahawks coach Tom Catlin dies

TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Tom Catlin, a longtime NFL assistant coach and a two-way star in the 1950s at the University of Oklahoma, has died. He was 76.

Catlin died Saturday at a hospice in Seattle of complications stemming from recent surgery, said his brother, Charles Catlin, who added that his brother recently had Parkinson’s disease.

Catlin was assistant head coach and defensive coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks, where he coached from 1983-1995. He earlier worked as an assistant coach for the Dallas Texans and Kansas City Chiefs in the American Football League, then the Los Angeles Rams and Buffalo Bills in the NFL.

Catlin played center and linebacker at OU from 1950-1952, and was a member of the Sooners’ 1950 squad that won the national championship under coach Bud Wilkinson.

Catlin was selected in the fourth round of the 1953 draft by the Baltimore Colts, and was traded to Cleveland and played for the Browns in 1953-54. He was an Air Force pilot in 1955-57, and returned to the Browns in 1957-58 before finishing his playing career a year later with the Philadelphia Eagles.

He is survived by his wife, Betty, daughter Kimberly Ekdahal and son Thomas Jr., four grandchildren and his brother.

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Former CFL linebacker Tyrone Jones dies at 46

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (AP) — Tyrone Jones, a linebacker who helped the Winnipeg Blue Bombers capture two Grey Cup titles during his eight-year tenure with the CFL club, has died. He was 46.

Jones, who starred at Southern University, died in his native Georgia on Tuesday morning. He was diagnosed with brain cancer in August 2005.

“This is a very sad day, however we need to remember and celebrate the person of Tyrone Jones; the player of Tyrone Jones and the human being that was Tyrone Jones,” said Bombers president Lyle Bauer, a former teammate of Jones. “He made a huge, huge impact on this football team and this league.”

Jones joined the Bombers in 1983 and spent eight seasons with the club. He also spent time with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and B.C. Lions, and tried out for the Phoenix Cardinals in 1988.

He was a four-time CFL All-Star and still holds the Winnipeg career sack record with 98. Jones was the 1984 Grey Cup MVP and in 1985 was named the CFL’s top defensive player.

Jones is survived by three sons.

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Groundbreaking sportscaster Jim McKay dies at 86

By DAVID BAUDER
AP Television Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Jim McKay elegantly covered competitions from badminton to barrel jumping. Yet he may best be remembered for that grim day at the Munich Olympics when he broke the news with three simple words: “They’re all gone.”

The groundbreaking sportscaster died Saturday of natural causes at his farm in Monkton, Md. He was 86.

McKay was the one who spanned the globe to bring television viewers the constant variety of sports on ABC’s influential “Wide World of Sports,” where he told of “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”

A far different kind of agony awaited in 1972 when word came down in Munich that Palestinian terrorists had kidnapped 11 Israeli athletes. McKay was summoned from a day off, hurriedly putting clothes over a bathing suit to anchor ABC’s coverage of the drama as the games stood still.

The commando raid to free the hostages ended awfully. McKay told the world. Later, at the closing ceremony, he read a poem by A.E. Housman, “To an Athlete Dying Young.”

“I had to control myself,” he later recalled. “I was full of emotion. But when you are a professional, it is important to communicate what it is like, to capture the moment.”

President Bush lauded McKay for his “skill and sensitivity” during coverage of the 1972 Olympics.

“He was a talented and eloquent newsman and storyteller whose special gift was his ability to make the viewers at home genuinely care about more than just who won or lost,” Bush said in a statement.

It was “Wide World of Sports” that built ABC Sports into a powerhouse after its debut in 1961. The age before ESPN and a constant video loop of highlights was simpler then, and viewers tuned in to see what new kind of competition McKay could find. ABC estimated McKay traveled 4-1/2 million miles on assignment for “Wide World,” covering 40 countries.

When he moved from NBC to ABC Sports, pioneering television executive Roone Arledge specifically sought out McKay.

“Some people … can make something dramatic by the inflections of their voices, without shouting,” Arledge said. “Jim’s not just somebody yelling at you. He has a sense of words, a sense of the drama of the moment.”

Sportscaster Mike Tirico recalled that at his home when growing up in New York “dinner wasn’t served until ’Wide World of Sports’ was over.” Tirico went on work at four British Opens with McKay.

“I remember him more than anything standing on some ski slope with snow falling around him and covering some downhill ski event somewhere in the world, whether it was the Olympics or not,” Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson said from the NBA finals in Boston. Jackson said McKay changed “our view of sports and our world experience of sports.”

The New York Yankees paused to remember McKay before their game Saturday. He died hours before Big Brown failed in his attempt to complete the Triple Crown at the Belmont Stakes in McKay’s favorite sport of all, horse racing.

A veteran of the U.S. Navy in World War II, James McManus was a newspaper reporter who transferred to television when The (Baltimore) Sun started its own station. He was the first on-air broadcaster seen in Baltimore, and hosted a three-hour weekday show, “The Sports Parade.”

He moved to New York to do a similar show there dubbed “The Real McKay” by a CBS executive. McManus changed his professional name accordingly.

“He had a remarkable career and a remarkable life,” his son, Sean McManus, president of CBS News and Sports, told The Associated Press on Saturday. “Hardly a day goes by when someone doesn’t come up to me and say how much they admired my father.”

McKay — understated, dignified and with a clear eye for detail — covered 12 Olympics. His last was in 2002 at Salt Lake City for NBC after he received special permission to get out of his lifetime contract with ABC Sports. NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol began working with McKay as a 19-year-old Olympics researcher in 1968.

“He was truly the most respected and admired sportscaster of his generation and defined how the stories of sports can and should be covered,” Ebersol said. “While we all know what an absolute titan he was in his chosen field, I will always remember him as an extraordinary human being guided by a strong moral compass.”

ESPN and ABC Sports president George Bodenheimer called McKay “a founding father of sports television.” Added Bob Iger, president and chief executive of The Walt Disney Company: “He was a regular guy who wrote and spoke like a poet.”

McKay left his mark on countless colleagues. Bob Costas called McKay a “singular broadcaster.”

“He brought a reporter’s eye, a literate touch, and above all a personal humanity to every assignment,” Costas said. “He had a combination of qualities seldom seen in the history of the medium, not just sports.”

CBS Sports’ Jim Nantz said McKay was the broadcasting hero of his youth.

“I hung onto his every words and wrote him letters when I was a kids,” he said. “I feel like one of the greatest joys of my life was having the chance to get to know him as a friend and father figure.”

Auto racing great A.J. Foyt called McKay one of the “most down-to-earth and sincere sports guys I knew.”

“He interviewed me many times and he was always a real gentleman,” Foyt said. “He didn’t ask stupid questions.”

McKay was a minority owner of the Baltimore Orioles. Majority owner Peter Angelos regarded him as a “visionary and a pioneer of sports broadcasting” who “never forgot where he came from, or his Maryland roots.”

In addition to McManus, McKay’s survivors include his wife, Margaret, and his daughter, Mary. Margaret met McKay when they were reporters at The Sun, and they would have celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in October.

“He was a great father and I don’t think he had one single regret when he passed away,” his son said.

Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

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McKay remembered as exemplary broadcaster, family man

By BEN NUCKOLS
Associated Press Writer
BALTIMORE (AP) — When Jim McKay traveled to St. Andrews in Scotland to cover the 2000 British Open it was his final overseas event in more than 50 years of broadcasting.

Sportscaster Jim Nantz visited McKay in his tiny, sparse hotel room before the final round. He recalled that McKay wasn’t emotional about the end of his career; he was upset about being away from his family.

“He longed to be home. That’s all he wanted to talk about,” Nantz said Tuesday at a funeral Mass for McKay. “He no longer had any appetite for the life of the lonely road warrior.”

About 200 people filled the pews of the cavernous Cathedral of Mary Our Queen for the funeral of McKay, the venerable host of ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” who died Saturday at 86 at his Maryland farm.

Relatives, friends and colleagues remembered McKay, born James Kenneth McManus, as a man who, despite his globe-trotting TV persona, longed for the simple pleasures of home and the company of his wife, Margaret, his son and daughter and his three grandchildren.

“He taught me how to drive a car and how to drive a golf ball,” James Fontelieu, McKay’s oldest grandson, said through tears. “He was my best friend.”

Among those in attendance were NBC Olympics host Bob Costas, “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric and NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol.

“He’s one of the greatest broadcasters in the history of the medium,” Costas said. “Jim essentially created the role of the modern Olympic host. He set the standard.”

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Police say steroid dealer killed himself

By LINDA STEWART BALL
Associated Press Writer

DALLAS (AP) — Authorities said Friday that a convicted steroids dealer who claimed to have sold drugs to pro football players killed himself, and the mother of a woman found dead in his home said she believes he killed her, too.

The Dallas County medical examiner ruled 35-year-old David Jacobs’ shooting death a suicide, but police in the Dallas suburb of Plano aren’t saying whether he shot his on-again, off-again girlfriend.

Both bodies were found in the master bedroom of Jacobs’ Plano home. He was shot in the abdomen and head, and 30-year-old Amanda Earhart-Savell was shot several times. A .40-caliber Glock was found next to Jacobs, police said.

Earhart-Savell’s mother said her daughter feared Jacobs.

“It was a murder-suicide, that’s what,” said Kathy Earhart, who also lives in Plano. “He was a dangerous man and she feared him. And he did what she thought he would do if he got to the point he was, which was distraught. He had no means of income, no nothing, so …”

Police said until they receive the medical examiner’s final report they can’t explain how Jacobs killed himself.

“I don’t know if he shot himself in the abdomen first and it was superficial. We just know that those were the two places he was shot,” said Plano police spokesman Andrae Smith.

Jacobs was sentenced to three years probation and fined $25,000 on May 1 after pleading guilty last year in federal court in Dallas to conspiring to possess with intent to distribute anabolic steroids. He met twice with NFL security officials and gave them names of players he said bought steroids from him.

Jacobs’ father, David Arthur Jacobs, has told The Dallas Morning News that he feared someone would hurt his son because of his steroid dealings. He didn’t think his son was suicidal, and he stood by that when contacted by The Associated Press on Friday.

“I don’t believe it, but it’s neither here nor there. That’s just my personal opinion,” the elder Jacobs said from his home in suburban Atlanta. “That’s all I’ve got to say at this point.”

Kathy Earhart said her daughter told her recently that Jacobs held a gun to his head and threatened to pull the trigger.

“She (Earhart-Savell) actually felt, I think, that she could calm him down and help him because he had threatened suicide before,” Earhart said, adding that she last saw her daughter Monday night at her Plano home. “She was trying to help — not to say that she didn’t care for him — but toward the end, it was fear more than care.”

The two regularly worked out in health clubs together, Kathy Earhart said. Jacobs was an amateur bodybuilder and Earhart-Savell was a “figure competitor” whose striking body graced the pages of fitness magazines, she said.

Earhart said she was hurt by some media reports that implied that her daughter was a bodybuilder. Earhart said that symmetry and beauty are important in figure competitions so “she wouldn’t need to take steroids,” because the drugs would have made her too big and bulky.

David Jacobs said he sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of performance-enhancing drugs to former Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman Matt Lehr in 2006 and 2007. Lehr has also played for Tampa Bay and Atlanta. Lehr’s attorney has denied his client used banned substances after a four-game suspension in 2006.

The NFL said Thursday it is evaluating information provided by Jacobs.

Jacobs’ attorney, Hank Hockeimer, didn’t return a phone call and e-mail seeking comment Friday.

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Dead steroids dealers tell no tales. Or do they? Jacobs said he supplied Titans LB Fowler.

DALLAS (AP) — Convicted steroids dealer David Jacobs said before his death last week he supplied Tennessee Titans linebacker Ryan Fowler with performance-enhancing drugs before and after the 2006 season, The Dallas Morning News reported Tuesday.

Fowler is under investigation by the NFL in an apparent steroids case.

Peter Ginsberg, Fowler’s lawyer, told The Associated Press on Monday he assumed the investigation stemmed from the death of Jacobs, who police say killed himself and his girlfriend in their Plano home. Ginsberg denied Fowler took steroids.

“He’s never tested positive for any banned substance,” the lawyer told the AP. “The accusations are without any basis.”

The Morning News reported that Jacobs said Fowler credited him for helping get a four-year, $11.5 million contract from the Titans after two seasons with the Dallas Cowboys.

“After he got his big contract, he came back, knocked on my door and hugged me,” Jacobs said.

The bodies of Jacobs, 35, and Amanda Jo Earhart-Savell were found Thursday in the master bedroom of Jacobs’ home. His death was ruled a suicide, and police have said a .40-caliber Glock was found next to Jacobs.

Jacobs was sentenced to three years’ probation and fined $25,000 May 1 after pleading guilty last year to conspiring to possess with intent to distribute anabolic steroids.

Jacobs previously told the Morning News he did not want to publicly implicate Fowler. He said he did not work out with Fowler.

Fowler allegedly met Jacobs through Bob Johnson, an amateur bodybuilder in suburban Dallas. Johnson said Fowler just wanted some vitamins and was “real adamant” about not taking anything illegal.

Jacobs met twice with NFL security officials and gave them names of players he said bought steroids from him. He has said he sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of performance-enhancing drugs to former Cowboys offensive lineman Matt Lehr in 2006 and 2007. Lehr’s attorney has denied his client used banned substances after a four-game suspension in 2006.

The NFL said last week it is evaluating information provided by Jacobs.

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Poland bids farewell to a young volleyball player

By VANESSA GERA
Associated Press Writer

TARNOW, Poland (AP) — A diagnosis of bone marrow disease at 17 did not stop volleyball player Agata Mroz from helping Poland’s national women’s team win two European gold medals over nine years.

“With a gold medal around my neck,” she once said, “I thought I had conquered this illness. I expected God to smile on me for good.”

But the benevolence proved fleeting. The disease returned and she died just two months after giving birth to a daughter, a pregnancy she said made her feel lucky all over again.

At a funeral Monday in the Roman Catholic church where she married Jacek Olszewski exactly one year before, the 26-year-old athlete was remembered for her heroism in sports and the grace with which she bore the disease.

Her husband and other family members were joined by young athletes in sports jerseys and weeping townspeople who gathered to honor Mroz, who was considered one of Poland’s best volleyball players.

“She passed into a different world, to a different team, to the main trainer,” Bishop Marian Florczyk said. “Her book of life has closed.”

Before the funeral Mass, Olszewski pushed a stroller with the couple’s sleeping daughter to the front of the church, placed an orange rose next to a metallic urn holding Mroz’s ashes, then took his seat in a front pew. Only at the moment when a priest blessed her mother’s ashes did the child cry. Olszewski then took her in his arms and kissed her softly on the forehead.

But the widower’s emotions veered to anger. On the day Mroz died last Wednesday, President Lech Kaczynski announced she would be given the Cross of the Order of Poland’s Rebirth, one of the country’s highest honors, for her athletic achievements.

A presidential envoy tried to present it to Olszewski during the Mass, but he refused it. He scolded state authorities for trying to glorify Mroz now — further sensationalizing a death that had already received much media attention.

“She shouldn’t be used in this way,” he told the packed congregation.

He then, to applause, kissed the golden wedding ring on his right hand and took his seat again.

Mroz was diagnosed at 17 with myelodysplastic syndrome, and was able to compete off-and-on over the years. She helped push the national team to victory in the European volleyball championships in 2003 and 2005. The team coach, Andrzej Niemczyk, described her in 2003 as “the wall of China — in the middle of the net and not to be defeated.”

She quit competing last year and married Olszewski on June 9. By that time, however, she was too ill for a honeymoon. Her recent life was marked by blood transfusions; her fans donated 3,170 pints of blood hoping to save her life.

Although doctors had cautioned Mroz against having children because of her health, she said she never regretted the decision.

“The news about the child made me feel lucky once again,” she said in an interview with the newspaper Dziennik in February. “I felt happy that I would feel what it is to be a mother. And that I would give my husband something good of myself.”

Due to fears of infection, doctors would not let Mroz hold her baby — she was only allowed to touch her palms briefly before being moved to another hospital for a bone marrow transplant.

During the Mass, Olszewski knelt in prayer, his hands clasped around the baby stroller and his glance moving between his daughter, Liliana, and a larger-than-life portrait of his wife at the height of health, her long hair framing the high cheekbones and full lips.

At the graveside in Tarnow, Olszewski vowed to raise a daughter that would make her proud.

“I have to tell you, Agata, I will raise her to be a wonderful girl.”
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Associated Press writer Zuzia Danielski contributed to this report.

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Coroner: Jail death of ’Spoon’ James due to natural causes

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Clark County coroner says a former UNLV basketball player found dead at the Las Vegas city jail died of natural causes.

Frank “Spoon” James was found dead in his cell Wednesday morning after a second night in the city lockup. Police say the 45-year-old James was being held on traffic warrant charges after a routine traffic stop.

The coroner says James died of heart ailments.

James played for Jerry Tarkanian’s Runnin’ Rebels in 1983-85 and was drafted by the Detroit Pistons in the seventh round in 1985. He did not make the team.

His brothers, Keith James and Karl “Boobie” James, also played for the Rebels.

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Ex-Steeler star Dwight White dies at 58

By ALAN ROBINSON
AP Sports Writer

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Dwight White, the Steel Curtain defensive end known as “Mad Dog” who helped lead the Pittsburgh Steelers to four Super Bowl titles in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 58.

The Steelers said White died at a Pittsburgh hospital. The cause was not disclosed. The team said White was released from the hospital after having back surgery, but then was readmitted with complications.

White is the second member of the original four-man Steel Curtain to die this year. Defensive tackle Ernie Holmes died Jan. 17 in a car accident in Texas.

White, a two-time Pro Bowl player, was chosen as one of the 33 members of the Steelers’ 75th anniversary all-time team last season.

White was best known for climbing out of a hospital bed to play in the Steelers’ first Super Bowl victory, 16-6 over the Minnesota Vikings in 1975. White lost 18 pounds after being diagnosed with pneumonia and a lung infection, yet played nearly the entire game.

White made three tackles for no yards as the Vikings ran seven of their first eight running plays his way and went on to finish with only 17 yards rushing on 21 attempts. White also accounted for the only points of the first half when he sacked Fran Tarkenton in the end zone for a safety.

White, a former player at East Texas State (now Texas A&M-Commerce), gained his nickname because of his intensity. He often said that playing on the defensive line was like having “a dog’s life.”

Steelers chairman Dan Rooney said that inner drive was the reason the 6-foot-4, 250-pounder could play so well only hours after being hospitalized.

“He played with a relentlessness that led us to four Super Bowl titles in the 1970s,” Rooney said in a statement. “Dwight refused to be denied, as was evidenced when he walked out of the hospital with pneumonia to play in Super Bowl IX and had an outstanding game. Dwight will be remembered by those who knew him even more for being a wonderful and caring person.”

Rooney’s son, Steelers president Art Rooney II, said the organization “lost an important member.”

“He always seemed to rise to the occasion when it counted most and added an element of toughness that was synonymous with our teams of the 1970s,” Rooney II said.

White’s death follows a trend in which former Steelers players have died at an uncommon rate. At least 38 former Steelers players have died since 2000, with 17 of them 59 or younger, as was White.

According to a Los Angeles Times survey in 2006, one-fifth of the former NFL players from the 1970s and 1980s who died through that year were former Steelers.

White was a fourth-round draft pick in 1971 after being a first-team All-Lone Star Conference player and team captain at East Texas State as a senior.

White made his first Pro Bowl in 1972, playing on a Steelers defensive line that also featured Hall of Famer Mean Joe Greene and defensive end L.C. Greenwood.

White repeated as a Pro Bowl selection in 1973 and his 46 sacks from 1971-80 are the seventh most in Steelers history. He had 33› sacks from 1972-75, with three in the Steelers’ 21-17 victory over the Dallas Cowboys in the January 1976 Super Bowl.

White was chosen by The Associated Press as a first team All-AFC player in 1973.

White retired after the 1980 season — one of the first players from the Steelers’ Super Bowl teams to do so — and became a prominent stock broker in Pittsburgh and one of the most successful former Steelers in the business world.

Most recently, he was senior managing director of public finance for Mesirow Financial in Pittsburgh. Before that, he was a partner and principal operator of the Pittsburgh office of W.R. Lazard & Co., plus a company board member, and worked for investment firms Balche-Halsey and Daniels & Bell.

“Let’s just say, like Yogi Bear used to say, I’m smarter than the average bear,” White told Pittsburgh author Jim O’Brien in 1991. In the same interview, he said his one vice was he smoked too much.

White, the oldest of three children who grew up in Hampton, Va., and Dallas, also was involved in numerous community events and charity activities.

“He had a special gift that enabled him to liven up any room that he entered,” Rooney II said.

White also was chairman of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.

“His NFL nickname, Mad Dog, belied the fact that he was a true gentleman and an accomplished business leader,” Gov. Ed Rendell said in a statement. “After retiring from football, he entered the financial services industry with the same tenacity and determination he showed on the football field.”

Funeral services are scheduled for Wednesday in Pittsburgh.

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Horst Skoff, Austrian tennis player, dies at 39

HAMBURG, Germany (AP) — Horst Skoff, a former Austrian tennis player who won four ATP Tour titles, died during a business trip to Germany. He was 39.

Austria’s tennis federation said Skoff died Saturday of a heart attack. Skoff’s friend, Arno Puckhofer, said federal police had ordered an autopsy to verify the cause of death. Puckhofer told Austrian news agency APA that police were investigating why Skoff had injuries to his face.

Puckhofer said Skoff, who ran a tennis school the past 19 months, battled weight problems since his retiring from the sport in 1995.

Skoff was ranked as high as 18th in the world in 1990, and had a singles record of 228-203. He also added two ATP Tour doubles titles to his four singles victories.

Skoff helped lead Austria to the 1990 Davis Cup semifinals along with the former top-ranked Thomas Muster. Austria lost 3-2 against the United States in front of 40,000 spectators at Vienna’s Prater Stadium, after Skoff lost a five-set match to Michael Chang.

“It’s hard to comprehend that a person so young had to die,” Muster said. “He accompanied me, challenged me and motivated me over many years.”

There was no immediate word of surviving family members.