Matt L. Stephens

matthewstephens@coloradoan.com

LARAMIE, Wyo. — Gone is the yellow sweater. The shepherd. The man who made Wyoming better.

Gone is the king of the Border. The reformer. The coach who couldn’t be silenced with a court order.

Gone is Papa Shy, one of the greatest Cowboys of all time.

When Wyoming’s Larry Shyatt announced his “retirement” Monday (his wife will never allow him to fully cut loose with shuffleboard), the Mountain West lost more than its best basketball coach. It lost a leader.

Two powerful forces maintained order in the conference for the past five years: Shyatt and San Diego State’s Steve Fisher, elder statesmen who were vocal but had contrasting approaches. When they spoke, we listened.

We listened to Fisher’s annual spiel about a need to move the Mountain West tournament from the Thomas & Mack Center. We listened to Shyatt’s soapbox in the Casper Star-Tribune, and later teleconference soliloquy, regarding the conference dropping the number of teams in said tournament from 11 to eight, a change that was unanimously against the will of the coaches.

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Shyatt’s, however, did. Despite a public reprimand from the conference office when he spoke on behalf of the coaches, the 2017 Mountain West tournament will include all league teams.

They were the most influential men in the league, and with the yin to Fisher’s yang leaving, it’s hard to picture someone filling that role so well in the future.

“Oh, I’m quite sure someone will. I look at myself as being the rebel, and I look at Fisher as being the diplomat, and we worked pretty well,” Shyatt told me Monday. “I have a lot of friends who think I’m nuts to leave that kind of money of the table (walking away from $2.81 million). You know, there’s an old expression, ‘You don’t know what you don’t know.’ And this is good for our family.”

“Cowboy” wasn’t just a mascot to Shyatt. He embodied it. He begged the media to take all the shots at him we wanted, so long as those bullets were never aimed at his players, and he was the one coach in the league willing to say what everyone was thinking. As he told the Star-Tribune in December, “There’s a lot of guys (coaches) who have to worry about their jobs, probably have to watch what they say. “When you’re 64, you don’t have to watch what you say. You speak from the heart and you speak the truth.”

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He never held back, never stood for injustice and was willing to take a fall to protect any coach. His personality might have irked some, but he was one of the good guys in the profession who put everyone else first, even campaigning behind closed doors to make sure one of his assistants was promoted following his departure. In an academic year for the Mountain West that’s been marred by filth (much, though not all, by its own doing), Shyatt was exactly what the league needed to remind everyone hope still exists.

With any luck, Papa Shy passes the torch. Colorado State’s Larry Eustachy should be the recipient. He’s outspoken, experienced and the only coach in the Mountain West with enough staying power to say whatever the hell he wants without fear of repercussions. With the relationship the two Larrys have (Shyatt plans to spend some of his down time in Fort Collins watching the Rams practice), he’d be the natural choice.

But whether it’s Eustachy, New Mexico’s Craig Neal or someone else who becomes Fisher’s bad cop, there’s no way to truly replace the original trailblazer.

The Mountain West has lost its cowboy.

For insight and analysis on athletics around Northern Colorado and the Mountain West, follow sports columnist Matt L. Stephens at twitter.com/mattstephens and facebook.com/stephensreporting.