OFFICIAL BIO: Todd Leabo is a Kansas Citian. His parents still live in the same Independence neighborhood they lived in when he was born. He is a product of the Queen City Athletic Association baseball and YMCA football leagues and Independence school district he went through as a youth.
He spent a lot of time reading sports books and playing whatever sport was in season as a kid. He was clearly a better reader than he was an athlete because it wasn’t an athletic scholarship that took him to the University of Oklahoma after graduation from Truman High School in 1988.
Todd thought he was going down to Norman to get a degree in something that had to do with the best football and basketball combo in the country. The Sooners had just finished as the runner-up for National Championships on the gridiron and hardwood the year before. However, Barry Switzer’s football program ran amok of NCAA rules and federal laws while Todd was a freshman and they wouldn’t be back in the spotlight until the calendar flipped to 2000… over a decade later.
The basketball program grabbed a couple of #1 seeds but never made it back to the Final Four under Billy Tubbs. Nonetheless, it was entertaining. Todd was in attendance for the following: a 97-point half; a 95-point victory; wins over #1 Arizona, UNLV, Kansas and Missouri; a 56-point game by Brent Price; and Coach Tubbs telling the crowd not to throw stuff on the court, “no matter how terrible the officiating is,” against Mizzou.
Leabo graduated in 1992 and decided leaving Kansas City to work in places like Quincy, IL or Flagstaff, AZ for very little money unappealing, so he went back to WDAF-TV Newschannel 4 and began working for free. That would eventually lead to full-time work in August of 1994 as a sports producer at what was now called Fox 4. That allowed him to quit his job as a food/beer vendor at the Truman Sports Complex and get married.
Eventually Leabo left Fox 4 in October 1996 for a “real” job with a more sensible schedule and better pay. He was pulled back into the business by former Fox 4 co-worker Kevin Kietzman in July of 1998 to work at something called Sports Radio 1510 KCTE… the rest is history.
High School: Truman High School 1988
College: University of Oklahoma 1992