• Share
  • Share this item

    Send this to a friend

  • Grab the link

    Copy and paste the link:

  • Blog about it

    Blog about this page.

  • Close
• Comment
• Facebook
• Digg
• Delicious
• Print

His glass on the bar is nearly empty. It held Miller Lite. But that’s gone and half-melted ice is all that’s left. It’s only 10 p.m. and Kid Rock is playing on the jukebox and he has more stories to tell. Of course, his glass is empty.

Larry Sinks orders another drink. Miller Lite on the rocks.

“It’s all I drink,” he says.

He leans back in his chair and takes a drink. Larry Sinks is living.

“This is my favorite Kid Rock song,” he says.

He’s partied with Kid Rock. He’s sipped on Miller Lites with him. He’s got the pictures to prove it. He was there when the American Badass punched a DJ in the face. Guy didn’t want to play Kid Rock, Sinks says.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Sinks says, as he drops a few more ice cubes into his beer.

He leans back from the bar and crosses his arm against his chest. It’s time for another story.

He sits here in this dimly lit bar in West Lawrence — a place where locals play pool and old friends reminisce about better days.

He orders another drink. Because each Miller Lite means another story. Another opportunity to lean across the bar to one of his best friends, Jamie Woolard, and tell one more incredible tale about a dinner with Muhammad Ali, or a backstage visit with Hank Williams Jr., or a wedding proposal on the set of “NYPD Blue.”

“We have a motto,” Woolard says, sitting next to Sinks. “We never let any opportunity pass us by.”

The man with the Miller Lite in front of him has spent a lifetime saying yes to grand adventures. But the man with the Miller Lite in front of him has spent the past two years saying no to the University of Kansas.

Sinks’ T-shirt company, JoeCollege.com, 734 Massachusetts St., has been mired in a two-and-a-half year legal battle with the University and the Athletics Department over T-shirts.

Seen the blue shirt with “Hawk Football” on the front and “Our Coach Can Eat Your Coach” on the back? Seen the one that says “Muck Fizzou”?

Sinks’ company prints those shirts — and many more — and the University and the Athletics Department contend the shirts infringe on their trademarks.

In July, a jury agreed, ruling that some of Sinks’ shirts did violate the University’s trademarks. The court ordered Sinks to pay the University more than $127,000. The University had wanted $509,000 — $476,000 in profits and $33,000 in royalties.

Now the University has filed a post-trial motion. Sinks’ battle with the University, it seems, is not over.

Now, he wants to tell another story.

Sinks is angry. He believes the University is targeting him. He says he’s spent more than $350,000 in legal fees protecting his business. He believes it’s personal.

As he takes another sip, he makes it clear whom he blames: Kansas Athletics Director Lew Perkins.

“I hate the guy,” Sinks says. “He’s the only guy in the world that I hate. I don’t care what happens to that man, ever.”

* * *

Growing up, the Sinks family had a little concrete patch in its backyard. Not too big, but big enough for a basketball goal. That’s all Larry Sinks needed. He was a feisty point guard with a competitive streak and basketball was his game, says Sinks’ father, Lawrence.

He’d go outside in the winter and shovel snow off that concrete patch so he could shoot baskets. That was at the house on 25th. That’s where the Sinks kids grew up. The family lived on the west side of Lawrence for a while, then moved to East 19th Street, before settling on that house on 25th Street.

They shuffled between houses, but the Sinks family could never leave town. They had too many connections in Lawrence, too much family. Lawrence was home.

Lawrence Sinks worked at the Lawrence Journal-World for 20 years. He watched his kids grow up in this town. He watched Larry play basketball at Lawrence High for future Kansas Athletics Director Bob Frederick.

“He was a really good shooter,” Lawrence says, tossing in that his son was All-League. “He scored 30-some points against Leavenworth one game.”

* * *

Back at the bar, another Kid Rock tune blares, and Larry Sinks’ round face starts to smile. He’s wearing jeans and a white button-down shirt.

“So my father told you about my basketball career,” he says.

Lawrence High basketball seems like a distant memory. One story he doesn’t tell often. He’s been through too much, seen too many things, lived too many nights since that time.

“I had some offers to play junior college ball,” he says calmly.

But college wasn’t part of the plan.Larry Sinks was going to be a racecar driver.

Sinks leans forward. The white of his shirtsleeve bunches around his shoulder as he fingers his drink.

It’s time for another story.

Sinks packed up all his things after high school and headed west for Colorado.

He was going to race sprint cars and midgets, high-powered little cars that run on short oval tracks.

His father had spent years in the racing business. Now it was his turn. It was the Sinks’ way.

Sinks’ grandfather had owned a quarter-mile speedway east of town. And in 1954, years before Sinks was born, Lawrence’s brother lost his life in a racecar.

Lawrence was undeterred. He started racing jalopies in the 1960s. A few years later, he was racing sprint cars, dragging his kids to country outposts in western Kansas, Oklahoma and parts of Missouri and Iowa.

“One summer, we ran Dodge City every Saturday night and Wichita every Sunday night,” Lawrence says.

Larry Sinks loved it. The dirt tracks, the excitement, the people. Sometimes he’d clean mud off the tires. Sometimes he’d help fuel the car.

“I wasn’t much help.” Sinks says.

It didn’t matter. Sinks knew what he wanted.

“He loves racing,” Lawrence says.

But in this story, Sinks learned the fragility of dreams. And Sinks’ racing dreams would die hard.

He was out in Colorado for six months, not even 20 years old, and trying to find his way. He was working construction to make some money, and one day, in an attempt to impress a girl, he put on a pair of skis.

Dumb move, Sinks admits.

He was a novice, hardly knew what he was doing, and he broke his arm on those damned skis.

Sinks headed back home to Lawrence to recuperate. His father put him to work on his Lawrence car lot, and soon Sinks made a decision that would change his life. A decision that would lead to a legal throw-down with the University of Kansas more than 20 years later.

* * *

Larry Sinks’ T-shirt story begins on a mechanic’s car lift in a small car garage at 23rd and Barker.

Sinks was back from Colorado and digging into the car business. From a chance encounter, he had learned a lesson in printing T-shirts.

The car business is slow in the winter. And Sinks saw a money-making opportunity in front of him.

He went to his father. What if we bought some equipment and made T-shirts in the winter? What if?

Lawrence was skeptical. His son was still young. And it was his money.

“I can make them both work,” Sinks told his dad.

Just like that, Larry Sinks was in the T-shirt business in August 1982.

He built his first company, Midwest Graphics, into a multi million dollar-a-year company. The company printed shirts for small colleges, local bars, restaurants, companies — anybody who wanted shirts.

“Larry’s pretty good at selling,” Lawrence says.

Sinks says, “I got lucky in the T-shirt business.”

After almost 15 years, Sinks sold Midwest Graphics in 1996 and signed a five-year no-compete clause.

But in 2002, Sinks reentered the T-shirt business with the company Victory Sportswear.

In February 2006, JoeCollege.com opened on Massachusetts Street.

And three months later, Sinks found a letter from the University of Kansas sitting in his mailbox.

* * *

Sinks sips on his Miller Lite and says those same words again.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” he says, smiling. He pulls a photo out of a folder. He’s serious about this. He doesn’t want people to think he’s lying. Sinks is in the photo. So is Hank Williams Jr. So is former Chief’s player Neil Smith. It’s one of his favorites.

Listen to Sinks talk long enough, and the name dropping begins. He laughs when people call him out for casually dropping, say, Muhammad Ali into a conversation about T-shirts. He doesn’t do it on purpose, he says. And all these people really do fit together. Just don’t blame him if it takes another round of drinks to piece his celebrity network of friends together.

It started with the late legendary sportscaster Dick Schaap. Schaap had connections in Lawrence.

In 1988, the year of Danny and the Miracles, Sinks’ T-shirt business was going gangbusters.

The Final Four was in Kansas City that year, and Schaap interviewed Sinks on ABC Nightline News. Sinks and Schaap stayed close for years, meeting up nearly every year at the Super Bowl.

Through Schaap, he met Tony and Huey Rodham — yes, Hillary Clinton’s brothers.

And yes, Sinks visited the White House, and yes, he’s met Bill Clinton.

But he doesn’t want his famous friends to define him, he says.

“I met Derrick Thomas,” he says calmly. “And Derrick Thomas introduced me to Hank Williams Jr. And Hank Williams Jr. introduced me to Kid Rock.”

There’s a story behind every name, and a new name in every story.

So many adventures. A dinner with Schaap and Ali in Orlando on Super Bowl weekend. A chance encounter with actor Tommy Davidson on the streets of Washington, D.C. And then there’s his greatest adventure. The one when he met his wife, Carrie.

Sinks was in Dallas on a Sunday in 1994. He was there to watch the Cowboys. He ended up finding his wife, too.

They met in a restaurant, exchanged numbers, and a week later, Sinks was flying Carrie in to see him.

“Usually when you meet somebody in a bar, you don’t expect them to call,” Carrie says.

But of course, Carrie had never met anyone like Larry.

She’d never met anyone who would fly her to New York, take her to the set of “NYPD Blue,” get actor Dennis Franz to get down on one knee for a fake proposal, before stepping in his place and saying, “Well, will you marry me?”

“With Larry, nothing is small. Nothing is easy,” Carrie says.

They were married in 1995. Then came two children. First a son, then a daughter.

Jamie Woolard says he knows why people love Larry Sinks.

“There’s nobody better than Larry,” Woolard says. “He’s real.”

“Let’s have one more drink,” Sinks says, interrupting Woolard.

It’s time for another story. There’s still plenty of night to live.

This one is about Kid Rock. But Sinks and Woolard struggle to tell it clearly.

Seems they have more than one. Which story is which? The stories blend together, merged in classic barstool oratory tradition.

Was this the story where Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson flew to Kansas City on Hank Williams Jr.’s plane to hang out?

Or the one when Kid Rock punched the DJ and got arrested?

“I was six feet away,” Willard claims.

Was it the weekend at the Country Music Awards?

Was former Chief Jared Allen hanging out with them that time?

And there are those words again.

You don’t believe me, do you?

Sinks fiddles with his phone. He’s just received a text from former NASCAR driver and Indy Car driver Larry Foyt, one of his many friends in the racing world.

His suite at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway helps with that.

Foyt puts it like this: “He’s just really genuine. Any time I’ve needed something, he’s been there.”

Sinks has another take on his famous friends.

“They’re just regular people,” he says.

* * *

The phone rang in Larry Sinks’ house on June 28, the night of the NBA Draft. The following day, Sinks would be back in a courtroom in Topeka, back fighting the University of Kansas. It had been two years since that letter appeared in Sinks’ mailbox. It was from the University, and it asked Sinks to stop selling certain shirts —‚ shirts the University thought infringed on its registered trademarks.

“Our request was to stop selling infringing and offensive shirts and shirts that had players’ names on it,” KU Associate Athletics Director Jim Marchiony says.

Sinks refused. The feisty point guard from Lawrence, the aggressive business man — that guy was going to fight.

“Larry’s never been one to roll over and play dead when he thinks he’s right,” Lawrence says.

For the next year and half, Sinks and the University would engage in a seemingly never-ending legal tango.

“Every time we created a new T-shirt, they added it to the lawsuit,” Sinks says.

When Sinks refused the University’s final settlement offer — Sinks says it was $900,000, but the University says settlement negotiations should remain confidential — the case went to trial on June 24.

Four nights later, on June 28, Sinks turned on the television and tried to forget about the lawsuit. Sasha Kaun, a center on Kansas’ 2008 NCAA Championship team, was coming over to watch the NBA Draft. Sinks, Kaun and a group of Kaun’s friends watched as five Jayhawks were drafted. Kaun would be taken in the second round by the Cleveland Cavaliers.

“Actually Sasha left about 20 minutes before he was drafted,” Sinks says.

Back at the bar, Sinks explains.

He’s been a supporter of KU sports for more than 25 years. He had a great relationship with former basketball coach, Larry Brown, he says. He says Victory Sportswear employed numerous KU athletes, including a handful of basketball players.

“It was all by the book,” he says. “They would clean screens, stack shirts, fold shirts, do a little bit of everything.”

The Sinks family became especially close to Kaun.

Carrie Sinks says Kaun still stays in touch with text messages.

“Sasha babysat my kids,” Sinks says, as he looks forward at his glass.

Sinks has one more story to tell.

The jury found some of Sinks’ shirts to be infringing.

But Sinks didn’t think the rulings were consistent. The jury found a shirt that said “Our Coach Can Eat Your Coach,” to be infringing. But it deemed many other shirts — blue shirts that read “Hawk Football” and “Hawk Basketball” on the front — to be okay.

“It didn’t make any sense,” Sinks says.

Those shirts are still sitting on racks in his store, next to dozens of the signs warning customers that the shirts are not licensed by the University.

The court ordered Sinks to pay the University more than $127,000. Neither side was exactly thrilled by the ruling. The University is asking the judge to set aside parts of the jury ruling.

Sinks says he’s had to hand over another $20,000 dollars for legal fees to keep fighting the University. He says he’s spent more than $350,000 so far.

“I live day to day, just like everybody else does. Times are tough for me. I’ve had to borrow money to pay these legal fees,” Sinks says. “It’s not like I just have money lying around to do it.”

Lawrence says it’s taken a toll on his son and his family.

“There’s been nights he hasn’t slept,” Lawrence says.

Sinks adds, “What’s frustrating to me, is that I went to court, there was a ruling, and they’re not satisfied with that ruling, so now they are coming after me for more stuff.”

Sinks takes a sip from his glass. It’s nearly empty. The ice is half-melted. He’d rather talk about better days. Good times with his dear friend Schaap, who died in 2001, or trips to the Indianapolis 500. Times filled with family and good music and auto racing and cold beer.

But if the subject comes up, if someone asks about the trial, he’s going to speak his mind. No doubt about it. He feels wronged. He feels victimized. And he blames Lew Perkins.

“He’s an asshole,” Sinks says. “I wouldn’t wish what he’s done to me on anybody.”

* * *

Perkins refused interview requests for this story.

But Marchiony says the case boils down to a simple fact.

“He willfully infringed on the University’s trademarks,” Marchiony says.

As for Sinks’ animosity toward Perkins?

Marchiony said the Athletics Department didn’t “pay much attention to comments in the media.”

“It doesn’t mean very much to us,” he says.

There’s another aspect of the case that doesn’t get brought up much, Marchiony says.

“There’s a considerable amount of money that goes directly to student scholarships,” he says. “That’s one of the major reasons we are fighting this so hard. Every time an unlicensed shirt is sold, we believe that takes money from student scholarship support.”

He adds, “We have asked a judge to set aside parts of the jury verdict that we believe are confusing and inconsistent.”

The legal war over T-shirts continues.

The glass on the bar is empty. The ice is gone, and Sinks drops $20 on the bar. He has to get going. He’s heading to California in the morning to meet Foyt, his old autoracing friend. Another adventure awaits.

For now, Sinks is awaiting the judge’s ruling on the post-trial motion. And then, there’s the possibility of an appeals process.

Sinks says he’ll keep fighting. He’ll keep raising a family. He’ll keep making edgy T-shirts. And he’ll keep ordering Miller Lites on the rocks.

Larry Sinks will keep living.

“He’s mellowed a bit,” Carrie says of her husband. “He works hard for what he has, and life is short. He should enjoy it.”

The bar is quiet, and the jukebox is worn out. Larry Sinks needs to go home. But he has one more story to tell. This one has Kid Rock in it too.

“You put a guitar in that guy’s hands and he’ll play for hours,” Sinks says.

“I told Kid Rock, I got an idea for a song,” Sinks says. “Everyone dies but not everyone lives. He said, ‘Yeah, I could make that song.’”

— — Edited by Tara Smith

• Share
  • Share this item

    Send this to a friend

  • Grab the link

    Copy and paste the link:

  • Blog about it

    Blog about this page.

  • Close
• Comment
• Facebook
• Digg
• Delicious
• Print