I once stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas and upon checking in found a handy bedside guide to having a threesome and assorted other sexual indiscretions. One of the tips they didn't share, however, was the one about marrying two different broads. Nor did they suggest a conversion to Mormonism. But as the family of UNLV sharpshooter Joe Darger illustrates there's more than one way to skin a cat.
College basketball has plenty of experience with nontraditional family structures: parents in jail, parents in shelters, parents missing entirely. Joe grew up with three parents in the house.
Joe's father, John, is married to his mother Carollee as well as to a woman named Elizabeth and the three of them oversee a brood of 18 children ranging from 2 to 40. They make for quite the cheering section at Running Rebel games, reports the New York Times.
They wear red T-shirts, blow on red noisemakers and wave red pompoms. They appear no different from any other group in the U.N.L.V. family section — only larger and louder.
The family calls Riverton, Utah home and shared a seven-bedroom, two bathroom house. Surprisingly all that closeness didn't make Joe comfortable living in the same dorm as women and he moved out of the student housing and into a house his parents bought for him in the outskirts of town. The whole family piles in there when they make their way to Vegas for games leaving Riverton devoid of most of its population.
Joe Darger's unusual background has nothing on his father who grew up with 46 siblings. His father also had several wives while John stopped at two, which may slightly benefit the overpopulation of the planet but makes him the butt of jokes at the yearly family reunions. It will be interesting to see how CBS covers them during UNLV's tournament games - at 25-6 the Rebels are a lock to be a part of the dance - since they'll be there and loud during each one of them.
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