Papa Larry: The Story Of How Clay Travis' Stepfather-In-Law Helped Launch The Idea For OutKick
Saturday afternoon my stepfather-in-law, Larry Kornacki died in an East Tennessee hospital. He was 78 years old and he'd been married 25 years to my mother-in-law, Marie. He died surrounded by family and friends, leaving behind a wife, two sons, and seven grandsons. He was a born-and-raised Michigander, spending his entire life in the Detroit area, before decamping to East Tennessee over a decade ago to enjoy the lake life in the Smokies. He thought it would be the perfect place for retirement, but loved his work and his business and never called it quits. A lifelong Detroit Lions fan, he couldn't believe the Lions run to the NFC championship game this past season or the Oakland University -- he was a donor -- win over the Kentucky Wildcats in the first round of the NCAA Tournament this past March.
My three boys called him Papa Larry and he was a fantastic grandfather to all of them, one of three fantastic grandfathers they've been able to spend their entire lives with to this point. He was a confident and fun guy. Early in his move to East Tennessee, he met Tennessee Lady Vols head coach Pat Summitt in a hotel elevator and later bragged she'd taken a shine to him during their elevator conversation.
Yeah, that confident.
And most of you don't know it, but you're reading OutKick because of Larry. The site probably wouldn't have existed without him. A lifelong entrepreneur and business owner himself, he was a driving force behind advising me to start my own business. Indeed, he was the very first person to ever tell me that I should start my own sports website. He saw talent and entrepreneurial ability in me before I saw it in myself.
For that, and many other fabulous gifts he gave our family, I will forever be eternally grateful to him.
So I wanted to take a moment this week to share this story about Larry, but also to encourage others out there to be the voices of support for others in times of challenge, to be the rocks upon which solid foundations of faith, family, and success can be built. It's fantastic to build things yourself, but it's every bit as important to aid others in building things themselves.
Larry did that.
OutKick is the result.
Larry Kornacki (back right), stepfather-in-law of Clay Travis, helped launch the idea for OutKick. (Photo courtesy of Clay Travis)
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So if you'll indulge me for a moment here, I have a couple of stories for you about Larry.
In January of 2011, I was fired by FanHouse.com.
It was a devastating personal blow to me and my young family. I'd just returned from Auburn's national title win over Oregon, where I'd filed multiple columns for FanHouse. The editor in chief there had been promising me a long-term contract extension as a national columnist for several months. The contract, he'd told me, was on his boss's boss's desk. It was the financial security I'd been seeking since I started writing online back in 2004. I'd been working my ass off for virtually no pay at FanHouse, writing all the time for the site while doing a full-time radio show in Nashville. Then, boom, the site shut down and most of us were fired overnight through no fault of our own.
Getting fired is always tough, but it's made tougher when you're not making much money and you have a family to support.
At the time I was fired I had a 2-year-old and a four-month-old.
Both were in daycare.
The daycare cost nearly my wife's entire salary as a guidance counselor at a Nashville-area high school.
I was making $40,000 a year to do daily radio.
Suddenly that was my entire income.
So we had a family of four, one job that paid for daycare and another job that didn't pay much to cover a family of four's living expenses. I felt like a failure as a dad and as a provider. I was soon to be 33 years old and I'd been grinding for eight years in sports media and I had almost nothing to show for it in terms of being able to make a living and take care of my family. I laid in bed at night wondering if I should give up on a media career at all.
Each morning in that Nashville winter, my wife got up at five in the morning and left for work at her high school. I got both boys up, the baby and the toddler, fed them, changed diapers, and took them to our middle class, at best, daycare in Nashville. I dropped them off there and then headed back home to write -- there were a couple of months until the site would shut down -- and then went to the radio studio for my daily show.
I was trying to decide what to do and discussed the situation with Larry on one of his visits to Nashville. I specifically remember where we were -- at the outlet malls in Lebanon, Tennesee, killing time while my wife and his wife shopped, a not irregular event in our lives. (Larry used to bring newspapers, books and magazines to read while he sat in the center of the mall and his wife shopped. That way he didn't worry about how long it was going to take.)
I told him how frustrating it was to be working as hard as I was and just have the rug completely pulled out from under me like this. I'd written at CBSSports.com, Deadspin and now FanHouse, but my concern was the way media was going, it felt like any job I got would potentially end in another firing too. Why work as hard as you could when you had no control over your future?
That's when Larry, who is among the sunniest and most optimistic people I've ever met in my life, told me the answer was easy to him, "You should start your own site," he said. "You're ready for it."
(Photo courtesy of Clay Travis)
* * *
Larry, as I mentioned above, was a print guy. He barely paid attention to the Internet, but he believed in my work ethic and my talent. And as I said Larry had been an entrepreneur his entire life -- in the food business outside Detroit for decades. He knew the many highs and the many lows of owning your own business. Indeed, his entire business went up in smoke one night, literally, his entire Hamtramck factory burned down.
When they finally put out the fire, there was nothing left, everything he and his dad before him had spent a lifetime building was gone.
When the insurance checks finally cleared, Larry was at retirement age for most people.
He could have pocketed the insurance money and retired.
Instead he started a brand new food business in the worst of the Michigan recession back in 2008, buying up virtually abandoned factories in the Detroit area and wagering he could build another, better business than the one that had burned down.
And he did.
His new food business, which is currently thriving, employs over 100 people in Michigan and his trucks deliver meat products all over the country.
I'd never been around anyone in my entire life who ran a business he owned. Everyone I'd ever known had always been an employee. Here now was someone with a successful life as a business owner telling me I should do the same.
Starting my own business was an idea I'd toyed with in my head -- after all I'd seen how three different online sports sites worked already -- and it won't surprise any of you that I thought I could do most people's jobs at all those places better than they could -- but it was, and still is, a big risk to start your own business. Especially with two young kids. Plus, I'd be doing everything, writing on the site, selling advertising, editing everyone else's work -- what if despite all that hard work, I still failed?
Getting fired sucks, but being an employee took much of the responsibility away from me. I turned in written words and then the business sent me a check. It was a far easier way to make a living with someone else responsible for my paycheck.
So I asked Larry directly a question that almost anyone who contemplates starting a business asks, "But what if it fails?"
"I don't think it will fail," he said at the Lebanon outlet mall that winter day, "but if it does, you'll do something else." He paused for a second, then smiled, bending over and grabbing my shoulder, "Plus, your mother-in-law would kill me if I let our grandsons starve."
And from that conversation, OutKick was born.
I launched Outkick in July of 2011, roughly six months after I'd been fired by FanHouse.
When I sold Outkick in 2021, Larry was incredibly proud.
I told him it would have never happened without him. So he knew. But most of you didn't.
And now you do.
(Photo courtesy of Clay Travis)
* * *
Another story, that I think gets at how funny Larry could be, even when everyone else was losing their minds.
I'm not sure of the exact year, but sometime around 2005, before we had kids but shortly after we got married, I was in Detroit for Thanksgiving with my wife Lara's family.
We were at Larry's house for dinner and it wasn't freezing that day so I was outside shooting basketball with my nephew, Chase, while everyone else got ready for dinner. Chase was 6 or 7 years old that year. And after we'd been shooting for a while, Chase started to ask for money if he made shots from certain places on the court. He told me Papa Larry would pay him money for made buckets.
So I started doing the same, after a while he was up to $10 for his made shots, but it was almost time for dinner, and Chase wanted more money before we went inside. I told him we only had time for one more shot.
I went to the far edge of the front yard, dribbled a couple of times, and told Chase, "This shot is double or nothing. If I miss it, you get $20, but if I make it, you get nothing. You understand?"
He jumped up and down, clapping his hands, "Yes," he said, with a gigantic smile.
I dribbled once more and then unleashed a mammoth long distance shot, a half court shot at least -- nothing but net.
Before the ball left even left the net, Chase was howling with tears and he raced inside.
Almost immediately, I could hear the screams from inside as everyone came to realize why Chase was crying.
Remember, we were newly married, this was the only kid in the entire house -- he was the first grandkid on both sides of the family -- and I'd just won a double or nothing bet with him on Thanksgiving.
I was afraid to go inside.
Plus, my mother-in-law really didn't like me. In fact, she kind of hated me at this point. She thought I was cocky and too impressed by myself. Crazy, right? (This is not an exaggerration. About a decade ago she finally started liking me -- how could anyone not like me? -- but she hated me back then and this wasn't helping things at all.)
The door opens.
Out comes my furious wife.
"What?" she screams, "The fuck are you doing? The whole house is ready to kill you. You took money from him?!"
"In my defense," I said, "it was a really good shot."
This didn't go over well.
She picked up the basketball, and I'm not kidding, threw it at me as hard as she could and then stormed back inside.
When she opened the door to go back inside, I could still hear the wailing. It turns out my sister-in-law and her family were threatening to leave Thanksgiving dinner entirely and my mother-in-law, who, of course, hated me, was trying to persuade them not to leave. Later I would hear the fight grew because my brother-in-law was not sufficiently angry enough when informed what all the hubbub was about. My sister-in-law explained the kerfuffle: "His Uncle Clay is teaching him how to gamble on Thanksgiving! And what is he teaching him?"
My brother-in-law responded, "To quit when he's ahead!"
So then she started screaming at him.
They later divorced.
I didn't hear about all the clamor inside until later. Back then the sun was going down on a Detroit Thanksgiving and I was standing outside in the driveway shooting baskets by myself, the newly married uncle who had just set the holiday meal on fire.
The door opened again.
This time it was Papa Larry.
He stepped outside and shut the door behind him. And said, "Boy, if I'd known you needed $20 that bad, I would have loaned it to you."
Then he doubled over with laughter.
He thought the uproar was the funniest Thanksgiving event he'd seen in years.
I asked him if it was safe to come back inside yet.
"Maybe give it five more minutes," he said. Then he asked me to point out where I'd made the shot from. He dribbled over to the point outside and eyed the rim from the long distance. "Son of a gun," he said, "that was a bad beat."
Several minutes later the two of us walked up the stairs to go back inside. He put his arm on my shoulder and gave me a slight hug.
"Don't worry," he said, "I've got your back."
As would be the case for the next nearly 20 years, he was right.
* * *
RIP Papa Larry, we all love you and were lucky to have you in our lives.