There was a time when Harvey Mackay and a sports columnist with the modest podium of the St. Paul Dispatch were at opposite ends of most sports issues.

There was the whole moving Gophers football to the Metrodome thing, where I was aligned with vocal opponent Bill Semans, and Harvey and the group then referred to as the Big Cigars of downtown Minneapolis were determined to make it happen.

They won, of course, and then a couple of years later Harvey and some cigars were able to make the deal to bring Lou Holtz to town as Gophers football coach.

Five minutes into his first news conference, Holtz was sounding as if he had arrived in Minnesota with Father Hennepin. Lou was so over the top that he soon was being referred to in those St. Paul columns as "the Music Man."

A promotional outfit came up with the idea of having a Lou Holtz look-a-like contest. One weekend night, I convinced the gent putting together the sports section that we should run a photo of Robert Preston with a Goldy Gopher decal on his Music Man hat as my candidate to win the contest.

This gave me quite a hoot, until being called into the office of feisty editor Deborah Howell the next day. "We don't alter photographs," said Howell, with fist-pounding on her desk included.

There was enough back-and-forth with Mackay in those days that later, in one of his post-Swim With the Sharks books, Harvey mentioned seeing the eventual grimace on my oval mug as his inspiration during the darkest days of the political fight to build the Metrodome.

Proud as I was of that passage, it actually was my radio partner Joe Soucheray, then of the Minneapolis Tribune, who wrote all the anti-Dome columns when the battle was being fought in the late '70s. It was the Gophers leaving Memorial Stadium that had me pounding out anti-Big Cigar columns.

Eventually, Harvey and I played some golf together, and he came to be appreciated as a unique Minnesota character. Unique as possible, actually, because there's only one Harvey -- always upbeat and ready to tell you about his wonderful existence.

I've run into Harvey on two occasions in recent weeks. Each time, he had two topics.

An aside here: When Mackay asks, "Did I tell you this?" you say no even if the answer is yes, because it would so disappoint him not to be able to repeat the tale.

Anyway, here were Harvey's topics for the winter of 2007-08:

A) "My handicap was 8 for a few years. I wanted to lower it. I went to my pro and said, 'What can I do to get my handicap to move?' He said, 'Play as many great courses as you can with good players. ' "

Mackay then went into a litany of where he had played over a six-month span in 2007: Augusta National, Cypress Point, Pebble Beach, Pinehurst Nos. 2 and 7, Bandon Dunes, Whistling Straits, etc., with a detour to Loch Lomond in Scotland tossed in for giggles.

"And now I'm a 6," he said, with the wide, satisfied Harvey smile.

B) "We don't agree on this, but I'm excellent at reading people, and I'm going to tell you this as a favor: Tim Brewster is the real deal.

"I haven't been around him a lot, but enough to say, 'If he doesn't do some very good things with Gophers football within the next three or four years, I'll be the most surprised person in Minnesota.' "

Come on, Harvey, you actually detect genuineness in those Brewster spiels filled with clichés and grandiose promises?

"Absolutely," Mackay said. "He has been preparing for this opportunity for 20 years, he has a strong plan and he has complete confidence in his ability to get the job done."

Can Brewster get it done with students as well as athletes, or will we follow success with revelations of academic and other hijinks?

"I see a quality person, and they attract quality people," Mackay said.

So, there you go. And what more assurance could Dinkytown want on Brewster than the endorsement of our one-of-a-kind Harvey?

Patrick Reusse can be heard weekdays on AM-1500 KSTP at 6:45 and 7:45 a.m. and 4:40 p.m. • preusse@startribune.com