Richard Codey was a passionate advocate for New Jersey sports — and a huge fan, too

“I have to take this. It’s the governor!”

My wife would roll her eyes when I used that line whenever then-Gov. Richard Codey called. He was not reaching out to a sports columnist, of course, to break down the latest budget impasse or offer insight into the latest property tax legislation.

It was never anything that trivial.

No, when Codey called, he wanted to discuss the topics that were most important to the man occupying the big office in Trenton. Maybe he wanted to share details of how his eighth-grade basketball team from West Orange performed in a national tournament. Maybe he wanted to gossip about the latest recruit that his beloved Seton Hall Pirates had on campus. Or maybe he was outraged at some sports-related injustice taking place on the high school level.

Codey, who died on Sunday at 79, was unlike any governor in New Jersey history — accidental, maybe, given his 14-month term came in 2004 after Jim McGreevey’s shocking resignation. But, when it came to the world of sports, nothing about his time in office was inconsequential.

“Obviously I’m more involved (in sports) than the previous governor,” he told me in 2005 during an hours-long interview about sports topics that took us to multiple basketball games. It was late December when we spoke, and he was wearing his favorite Christmas gift on his wrist — a national championship watch from Hall of Fame Connecticut basketball coach Jim Calhoun.

“The bigger question is: How much time do I spend thinking about athletics?” Codey said. “That one, even I don’t know.”

As governor, the longtime state senator, D-Essex, played a huge role in brokering the deal with the Giants and Jets to build MetLife Stadium. It was a fraught moment — the Jets wanted to move to Manhattan while the Giants were content to build their own stadium — but Codey was instrumental in keeping both teams in East Rutherford. The deal was viewed by some as too favorable for the two teams, but in Codey’s correct estimation, that was better than the alternative.

He never hesitated to use his clout to bring attention to sports issues — big and small — that he cared about. That continued long after his time as governor. When talks broke down to bring Greg Schiano back to Rutgers, it was Codey who helped convince Gov. Phil Murphy to throw his weight behind the former coach and bring both sides back to the table.

If not for Codey’s involvement, there’s no telling who is coaching in Piscataway now.

“I think there were a lot of people who stepped up the second time coming back, but certainly Gov. Codey was one,” Schiano said.

“He was a great connector. He could bring people together. He had his tentacles into everybody — a lot of friends in all different places, and he was able to connect people as well as anybody I’ve been around. He was a great supporter and a good friend."

This was never a job for Codey, a lifelong sports fan who just happened to be a politician. When Seton Hall hired P.J. Carlesimo in 1982, Codey was one of the first people who called the young coach to offer his help. That first day on the job, Carlesimo said, Codey escorted him to a high school basketball game to recruit a player who ended up going to Rutgers.

“That was the first of about a thousand (favors) — and that’s not an exaggeration," Carlesimo said in a phone interview on Sunday afternoon. “He would do anything he could do to help the program, our players or just people in Jersey in general. He never said no. He was so good to so many people.”

Codey didn’t give up on Carlesimo when the Pirates struggled during his first few seasons in South Orange. When they broke through and reached the 1989 Final Four, Codey was there.

But, then again, he was always there. Jerry Walker, one of the team’s stars, remembers looking up before games to see Codey in his same seats at the Meadowlands arena over the years. Walker, like Codey, became a youth basketball coach in North Jersey and remembers going head-to-head with the man he had gotten to know well as a college player — and seeing his competitive side.

“He beat us every game in the regular season, but we beat him in the championship game,” Walker said. “He was so pissed off at the refs, he yelled at them, ‘You’ll never referee in the state of New Jersey again!’ This is when he was governor, so he had the state troopers with him! He hated to lose.”

The relationship Walker developed with Codey continued throughout his adult life — and, in recent years, Walker’s own career in politics. When Walker was elected as a Hudson County freeholder in 2018, he asked Codey to swear him in. He still has the photo of that moment framed in his office.

Walker was hoping Codey would be in Trenton this week when he was sworn in for the first time as a state assemblyman. He knew, though, that was a long shot. The seats that Codey had occupied for more than 40 years at Seton Hall games had been empty in recent seasons as he dealt with health issues.

When news of his death broke on Sunday morning, the obituaries focused on his half-century as an influential state legislator and his unexpected 14 months as governor. Plenty of people who knew him around the state, however, just remembered Richard Codey as a guy who loved New Jersey sports with a passion.

He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

MORE FROM STEVE POLITI:

How N.J. gymnast Livvy Dunne led a revolution in college sports

Late Rutgers star was a legend in my hometown — and, for a kid sportswriter, a savior

The untold story of how Rutgers crashed the Big Ten

I was a bird-flipping Little League menace — and it’s time to come clean

Last of the Lifers: Can a high school coach survive for half a century in today’s world?

How an ex-Rutgers athlete ended up charged with murder in Tijuana

Read the original article on NJ.com. Add NJ.com as a Preferred Source by clicking here.