Listen to the complete interview with Marc KouzmanoffMarc Kouzmanoff was adamant when he showed up at the University of Montana in 1970 to play Grizzly football.
His name was pronounced KUZ-mun-off, not KOOZ-mun-off.
But things have changed.
When his second son, Kevin, started his pro baseball career in the minor leagues in 2003, the family decided fans would rather chant "Koooz" than "Kuuuz," so they relented on the pronunciation.
The fact is, they had long since determined that either version was acceptable and it wasn't worth the effort trying to have it one way.
An outstanding high school football player in Glen Ellyn, Ill., Kouzmanoff had numerous scholarship offers from Midwest schools and even got a sniff from the Washington Huskies. But it was a chance conversation that led him to Montana, a place he had never been or even considered seriously early on.
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"I was a busboy at a restaurant, and while serving coffee to one of the people that knew me in high school football, he said, 'Hey Marc, where are you going to go to college?'" Kouzmanoff recalled recently.
"I said, 'Mr. Mendez, I don't know,'" Kouzmanoff continued.
The man, who had been hunting in Montana before and knew Kouzmanoff liked the outdoors, told him he should go to the University of Montana, and without even hesitating or looking in an atlas to see where the school was, he decided to head west.
Kouzmanoff and his dad visited Montana in January of his senior year in high school when it was "five degrees, it was snowing, and the wind was blowing about 35 miles an hour," he said. "We walked around the oval and it was freezing," Kouzmanoff went on, "and I said, 'this is exactly where I want to be.'"
His decision to move to Missoula had nothing to do with football, a sport his mother didn't even want him not go out for. But since he was about five years old he had an interest in wildlife.
"Montana was ranked the third best school in the United States in wildlife biology behind Michigan State and I think it was Cornell," Kouzmanoff said.
After all of that, Kouzmanoff has never worked in the wildlife biology field, discouraged after graduation by the lack of job availability. One position paid nothing and the other he found started at $500 per month.
On top of that Kouzmanoff did not go on to grad school, which would have better set him up to find work in the field.
In high school Kouzmanoff had competed in football, wrestling and golf, making all-conference in all three. Even though he didn't care much for wrestling, he said it probably was his best sport. But his favorite was football.
"I just never envisioned being able to play at the next level," Kouzmanoff said, "because on the (high school) team that I played on, several of them went to Big 10 schools. I just didn't know if I was good enough."
He turned out to be good enough to make All-Big Sky Conference second team as a defensive end in 1973 following his senior season.
Kouzmanoff also took a stab at wrestling the year after legendary UM heavyweight Larry Miller, also a football player, finished his career. Kouzmanoff tried to go through a condensed, one-week conditioning program hoping to represent UM in the conference tournament.
"I got spanked," Kouzmanoff laughed. "I ended up wrestling a guy who I wrestled in high school, who I just mauled in high school. He was scared to death until he saw how out of shape I was."
One of the troubling things during Kouzmanoff's three-year football career at Montana was an effort at that time to eliminate, or at least severely cut, the football budget.
He remembers speaking at student government hearings with head coach Jack Swarthout and others, trying to defend the sport as important to the school.
"It got pretty frustrating, so that was a disappointment to watch the football program go down so quickly because of a few people," Kouzmanoff stated. He had been a walk-on in 1970, the second year in a row UM had gone undefeated during the regular football season.
Kouzmanoff said his fondest memories of Grizzly football came from "playing when it was tough, when it was cold and it hurt and you didn't feel well, and your hands were all smashed up by the end of the season."
He relished the challenge of going head to head with much bigger offensive linemen, and loved playing side by side with the likes of tackle Jim Leid.
Like so many
others, Kouzmanoff developed a strong admiration for Swarthout,
primarily for his organizational skills.
"Jack realized that he couldn't do everything," Kouzmanoff noted. "He had a tremendous set of coaches underneath him (like) . . . (Jack) Elway and (Bill) Betcher, and he brought with him the infrastructure to make the team successful."
Kouzmanoff said Swarthout basically let his offensive and defensive coordinators run the team. Of course, Swarthout also was serving as the school's athletic director at the time.
After leaving UM, Kouzmanoff had a short stint with the Chicago Bears as a free agent, making it to the last cut in 1974. At about the same time he found himself unemployed, he started dating the woman who would become his wife.
The two had gone to the same high school but didn't know each other then. They got together at the suggestion of another former classmate shortly after the Bears cut Kouzmanoff.
Marc and Kim decided to head west, landing in Denver. He got into the health club business, something he thought might provide some other contacts and opportunities.
Kouzmanoff jumped on a chance to run a string of health spas in the Orange County and San Diego areas, where he and Kim spent about 10 years.
He and a partner started their own chain of health clubs, but the arrangement soured fairly quickly. They ended up splitting the company, and when his former partner's businesses went under, Kouzmanoff was saddled with having to pick up the pieces.
"It literally forced me into insolvency," Kouzmanoff recalled, "so I had to sell out of the health spa business, or bail out of it, however you want to describe it."
At about that time he ran into an acquaintance from Montana who suggested that he apply for an open position with a company that had an opening in San Diego. Kouzmanoff is still working for that company today,
"I am a sales rep for a software company that provides information to tax professionals," Kouzmanoff explained, adding that the Thomson Co. just purchased Reuters in April of this year.
It's a job with built-in flexibility that allows Kouzmanoff to move hours around and set aside time for family and coaching, among other things. He does a lot of his work out of a home office near Denver.
Marc and Kim have two others sons: Brant, 28, who works for the Mayflower moving company, and Ky, 26, who works in the apartment business in Orange County. Brant, oddly enough, lives in his dad's home town of Glen Ellyn, Ill.
Kevin, born in between Brant and Ky, was the ultimate late bloomer. He's gone from being a 103-pound high school wrestler to a major league third baseman with definite pop in his bat.
Because he was so small at first, his father steered him into baseball.
Kevin didn't exactly light up the diamond as a Colorado high school player in a relatively weak conference. Following graduation, Kevin played summer baseball while his dad looked for a college where he might be able to play.
When all was said and done Kevin wound up at Cochise Junior College in Douglas, Ariz., right on the Mexican border.
Kevin batted under .230 with just one home run while at Cochise, so once again, four-year schools weren't exactly knocking his door down with offers. In fact, the only one came from Arkansas-Little Rock, not exactly a college baseball powerhouse, so he took it.
"As a junior (at ALR), that was his first good year that he had in baseball," Marc Kouzmanoff said. "He was finally starting to grow into it and to focus and to get stronger. He became a long-ball hitter."
Kouzmanoff became concerned about his son's future when the Little Rock coach began cutting other players who were about to be seniors. So he began looking for a place Kevin could transfer.
Unfortunately, the contacts he made were a violation of NCAA rules. One of the coaches he talked to spilled the beans to the Little Rock coach, who called Kouzmanoff and said he would not release Kevin from his scholarship.
Using some legal means, Kouzmanoff got his son out of the Little Rock scholarship. Kevin then walked on as a senior at Nevada-Reno, and was named Western Athletic Conference player of the year in 2003.
The Cleveland Indians drafted Kevin in the sixth round later that year. He began a steady climb through the team's minor league affiliates, winding up in AAA Buffalo in 2006. Late that season, Kevin was called up to the major league club and told to join the team in Arlington, Tex.
His proud parents and brothers, along with other friends and relatives, made the trip to Texas and were there to see Kevin make his major league debut.
He's the only player in major league history to hit a grand slam home run on the first pitch thrown to him. Only two other players have hit a grand slam in their first at bat.
The following winter Kevin was traded to the San Diego Padres, and he quickly established himself as the team's regular third baseman.
Marc and Kim purchased a Major League Baseball satellite television package and can watch every one of his games. They see Kevin in person when the Padres play the Colorado Rockies in Denver and, if the schedule works out, he's able to visit their mountain home and do a little fishing.
Always the taskmaster, Marc said Kevin "is doing okay, but he can do better."
At last check he was batting .276 with 19 home runs.
"I think he has the same internal mechanism that I had (at Montana)," Kouzmanoff said of his son. "I never said much. I would just look at something and decide what it would take to get there, and just go out and do it."
Kouzmanoff gets back to Montana about once a year and is planning a trip for Homecoming on the weekend of Sept. 20.
In the meantime he continues to be active with UM boosters in the Denver area and provides financial support for athletic and academic programs at the school.
