'Dropping the mic the right way.' Alan Cutler says goodbye at the Kentucky Derby
When WLEX-TV sportscaster Alan Cutler decided to retire, his last day was obvious: Derby Day.
That wouldn’t have been obvious back in 1981 when he came to the NBC affiliate. Back then, Cutler was a hardcore football, basketball, baseball guy. But then he slowly became immersed in the sport, and particularly the characters and the stories.
“I love telling stories about people,” he said Saturday morning during a break between live shots in the Churchill Downs Paddock. “I think it’s what I do best.”
Several times over the course of two conversations, he rhapsodizes about a piece he and photographer Brian Gilbert shot at Glenwood Farm, which has two mares that produced horses running in the Kentucky Derby this year: Justify and Vino Rosso. When they went to the farm to shoot the segment, which was set to air during WLEX’s Derby coverage Saturday, one of their mares had given birth just 14 hours before, and they got to be there when the foal went outside the first time.
“We had these huge smiles on our faces that were off the charts, because this was so cool,” Cutler said. “Doing stories like that is what I love doing.
“It’s kind of like dropping the mic the right way,” Cutler says of the retirement day.
It was a decision Cutler made last fall; October, to be precise. He said it was during one of LEX's Friday night prep football wrap ups, and as usual, they were trying to find a score for a game.
"It happened in September and then it solidified in October," Cutler said. "It was the typical, 'Who's got the score? Hey, can somebody else get it?' And we got the score, and it dawned on me, I don't want to die at the TV station on a Friday night looking for a high school football score.
"It hit me: You know, I've done this enough. And the truth is, I love doing that high school show forever. It's just, I'm kinda tired of doing it. It's really nothing more, nothing less."
It's a sentiment that Cutler returned to several times during an hour-long interview Thursday afternoon. He loved his career, the opportunities it gave him, the stories he's gotten to tell and history he's seen being made, but he's done. The life-consuming nature of the job, particularly in the age of social media when people in journalism and media feel a demand to constantly be online, leaves little time for watching the grandkids grow up or work on losing those pounds he wants to drop.
So, Cutler consulted with his family last fall, and they decided it was time for him to retire. Then, he didn't tell anyone else, for months.
He finally let the cat out of the bag at a station celebration in February, right after a video segment honoring his 30 years at the station — there was a gap in his tenure from 1984 to ’87 when he was in Pittsburgh.
Since the announcement, Cutler says he has been met with an outpouring of support from colleagues and viewers. As he was on the phone during his final day in the station's Lexington office, he was receiving greetings from co-workers, including a bottle of fine bourbon from chief meteorologist Bill Meck with a note Culter said he'd have to read in private.
Giving up the work is the easy part, Cutler says. But saying goodbye to his colleagues, "is harder than I expected," he adds, choking up for a second.
"This whole thing has been strangely overwhelming," Cutler says, "Almost uncomfortably overwhelming."
Clearly, he loves covering horse racing and has had a ball the past few weeks shooting segments to air Derby week and during Saturday's marathon 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. broadcast from Churchill Downs. But Cutler loves other things on his beat too, from high school basketball to the Cincinnati Bengals and, of course, the Wildcats.
Asked to name his favorite event to cover, Cutler zeroes in on an unusual suspect: the UK Men's basketball team's victory over Duke in the 1998 NCAA Tournament. It was two games before the Cats won the whole thing with a victory over Utah, but Cutler rapturously talks about two offenses firing on all cylinders and first-year coach Tubby Smith out-coaching Duke's Mike Krzyzewski.
But the game stays with Cutler because of what he saw afterward.
"I'm walking down from the Duke bench to where the Kentucky players were to meet the photographer and get my shots, and I turn to the right, and it's the darndest thing: people are crying in the stands," Cutler said. "They're crying, and it wasn't one or two people. There were a lot of people crying. It hit me at that moment how important it was to beat Duke. There was no one crying when they beat Utah for the national championship.
"The emotion of that game was stronger than the emotion of any other game that I've covered here."
And now he is dealing with the emotions of leaving a career of a lifetime and a workplace of 30 years.
Cutler does not rule out doing something in the future, like maybe a radio show or even calling play-by-play for a high school team. But there are no plans at the moment, and he says he’s not looking for anything.
“The No. 1 requirement is if I do something else, it has to be fun,” Cutler says. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
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This story was originally published May 5, 2018 at 12:48 PM with the headline "'Dropping the mic the right way.' Alan Cutler says goodbye at the Kentucky Derby."