Host of the sports talk radio show “First & 505,” Ryan Tomari wrote the famous prognosticating column that led to former UNM head coach Mike Locksley’s infamous blowup at Uptown Sports Bar.
Tomari is equal parts New Jersey and New Mexico, although his tenure in the Land of Enchantment is more successful than 2-26.
It took him a decade to get his bachelor’s degree in history from the University of New Mexico.
Still thinking two plus to is five, he’s a statistics class away from a print journalism degree, but he doesn’t really need it after spending his college years at the Daily Lobo, the beloved and bedraggled independent voice known affectionately by students as “The Daily Low Blow.”
Rising to sports editor at the Daily Lobo, Tomari covered the failed Locksley experiment, New Mexicans’ jilted love affair with former UNM men’s head basketball coach Steve Alford and the abrupt retirement of former UNM women’s head basketball coach Don Flanagan.
He worked in media relations for the Albuquerque Isotopes and spent a year with the Albuquerque Journal before returning closer to his family roots in central New Jersey, where he worked for CBS Sports, helping run highlights, and doing research during live broadcasts of NFL, college football and basketball games.
Tomari loves the tortured New York Mets, and joyously took in David Tyree’s miracle-helmet catch and Mario Manningham’s toe-tapping “insurance” clutchness that aided the New York Giants’ blissful Super Bowl runs.
A sports nerd, Tomari has an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball and still regrets not approaching baseball icon Tony Gwynn at Bandido Hideout decades ago.
He misses his late father, Stephen, a Rutgers graduate who started his Ph.D. at Wichita State University before moving to New Mexico to take a job at Sandia Labs. And he enjoyed every moment of Wichita State’s magical tourney run in 2013.
Tomari has a 5-year-old son, Aidan, loves his home state because it’s “not that new and not that old,” prefers green over red chile and considers 1990s Homer Simpson the “best thing since sliced bread.”
His radio personality is a little bit Jim Rome and a little bit Jay Mohr – sharp, comedic and endearing.
He’ll never regret calling the new Lobo men’s head basketball coach “Rich” on air. Strike that Richard Pitino.
