It's the one with the bare curb.
"See, everybody has their trash can out except me," says the Texas A&M's women's head basketball coach as he looks around his neighborhood. "I haven't been home long enough to fill mine up."
Every March since 1975 has wreaked some degree of madness in the 63-year-old's life, usually the good kind.
Last season his Aggies reached the Elite Eight for the first time in the program's history, falling to eventual champion Tennessee. This year, No. 2-seed A&M was placed in the same regional as unbeaten Connecticut. Ouch.
But that dilemma is a blast of Texas sunshine compared with Aggie women's basketball's grim pre-Blair days. When A&M athletics director Bill Byrne hired Blair in 2003, the Aggies' all-time Big 12 record was 22-90.
"Absolutely one of the worst programs in the nation," Byrne said. "Our tradition, and we're proud of traditions here, was 'We lost.'"
For reasons Blair still can't explain, he's had a habit of winning with the opposite gender since 1973 - and it started by happenstance.
South Oak Cliff High was starting a girls basketball program. The two girls P.E. teachers were doubling as cheerleader and drill-squad sponsors. Three girls knocked on boys P.E. teacher Blair's gym door and asked if he would coach them.
He made $7,000 for coaching P.E., boys and girls golf and girls basketball. At A&M, he earns $800,000 annually.
During his SOC days, he had long brown hair and a matching mustache and wore gaudy sports coats. He had a closet-sized office and organized bake sales, dances and carnivals to raise gas money for road trips.
Now his hair is mostly silver. Before every game, he stops by Lew's Men's Wear to pick out a free tie. He offices in A&M's new $23 million men's and women's basketball practice facility. His picture window faces Kyle Field.
But in October 1980, when Louisiana Tech women's coach Sonja Hogg offered Blair a chance to enter the college ranks as an assistant, he nearly blew it.
He had taken SOC to five straight state tournaments, won three state titles and 105 of his last 106 games. He was making $22,000, but Tech offered $500 more and a 6-year-old, brown station wagon.
"He came downstairs and said, 'I just talked to Sonja Hogg and told her I wasn't going to come,'" recalls Blair's wife of 29 years, Nan. "And I said, 'Well, I seriously think you need to go back upstairs and tell her you're coming.'"
A man of habit
On a typical day, Blair leaves home around 8 a.m.
He does some personal chores and an interview or two on the phone or in person before he reaches the office. He has staff and player meetings, does some film work, oversees practice, then another staff meeting and more film work.
Blair talks about his team to anyone who will listen.
Most major college coaches would deem such access unthinkable, but Blair clearly relishes the chance to espouse A&M women's basketball and share his folksy witticisms.
He says he sleeps three to four hours a night. When he isn't out of town for games or recruiting, he reaches the office by 8:30 a.m. with his morning essentials -- a Diet Coke, an electric razor and all the newspapers sold in the Bryan-College Station area. Blair bemoans that The Dallas Morning News, his hometown paper, and the Austin American-Statesman don't deliver in B-CS any more.
He finally learned how to access e-mails and texts on his Blackberry but replies only by phoning back. He likes the personal touch.
"I do not use a computer, OK?" he said. "I have an assistant print the other articles from the Internet. I'd rather hold it in my hands."
Nan says her husband is "very ritualistic." A couple of years ago, she drove him to a convenience store, watched him emerge with his drink and papers and plop into the passenger seat. Of the wrong car.
"He opens the can and he's sipping and reading," Nan says. "There's a lady in the car. He looks over, introduces himself and stays about five minutes."
Old days in Dallas
Gary and Nan met during his high school coaching days. They lived in the same apartment complex. She was a nurse in Parkland Hospital's neonatal intensive care unit.
Now she is Dr. Nan Smith-Blair, director of the University of Arkansas' school of nursing and an associate professor.
During basketball season they have had a commuter marriage, but she attends many home and road games and says she sees Gary almost as much as she did during his 10 seasons at Arkansas.
"Every time we have moved, it's been to better my career," he said. "But now her career's going better than mine. She's got tenure. There's no such thing as tenure in coaching."
Oh, he's doing OK, too, for someone who didn't graduate from college until he was 27 and didn't become a Division I head coach until age 40 - at Stephen F. Austin in 1985.
The son of a plaster foreman, Lee, and housewife, Jean, Blair grew up on one of the three "working-class" streets, as he calls them, in East Dallas' Forest Hills neighborhood.
Gary grew up playing baseball in the streets and going to Cowboys and Texans games for $1 at the Cotton Bowl. He made all-city as a Bryan Adams center fielder in 1963 despite weighing just 128 pounds.
He flunked out of architecture at Texas Tech and was a restaurant manager in California when he got an Army draft notice in 1969. He opted to join the Marines, felt fortunate to be stationed in Okinawa, then "sprinted back" to Tech.
After graduation, he hoped to get a high school baseball job in Lubbock, but predominantly black South Oak Cliff called first. When asked to start a golf program that first year in 1972, he rounded up five boys and two girls from the hallways and got clubs from pawn shops.
"The eight of us would get in my '71 Camaro, no air conditioning," he said. "My best player weighed about 280, so he sat in front."
A rising program
Blair often passes by G. Rollie White Coliseum where Blair's SOC teams won five regional tournaments. Luckily for Blair, G. Rollie has been replaced by Reed Arena and the Cox-McFerrin Center for Basketball.
The 68,000 square foot state-of-the-art Cox-McFerrin Center has plush locker rooms, hydrotherapy pools, an Aggie Salon and a players' lounge, among many other spoils. But long before the women's team moved into the facility in December, Blair and his staff drew recruits to the once-dead-end program.
"Obviously, the program was on the rise," sophomore guard Maryann Baker said. "Coach Blair's so easy to talk to. It wasn't like he was trying to act like the greatest coach in the world."
Sometimes the homespun quips give way to sharp sarcasm. "That's just not very pretty," Blair blurts during a video session. Then, during practice, "Honey, I thought you knew what you were doing. I forgot ... you're a freshman."
Last season, Blair started marking a plus sign on top of his hand to remind himself to be positive.
"Sometimes it works," says sophomore guard Sydney Colson, rolling her eyes.
When the Aggies toppled No. 2 Oklahoma 57-56 on Feb. 23, most of the 7,035 Reed Arena fans rushed the court. That had never happened at an Aggie women's game.
Blair didn't join the celebration. He sat on the scorer's table and watched. Someone handed him a microphone, but for one of the few times in his life, he was practically speechless.
"Thanks for stayin' with us," he said, choking back tears.
Right at home
Blair attends as many A&M baseball and softball games as possible. He sits in the students section, eats a hot dog and greets well-wishers. He also makes sure to go through the press box just in case someone needs an interview.
"If more than three people are gathered on a street corner, Gary Blair will stop and talk to them about women's basketball," Byrne said. "And if they show a little bit of interest, he'll give them free tickets to the next game."
Blair has been blessed in March.
He's won two national championships as an assistant at Louisiana Tech and in 24 years as a college head coach he's 537-228.
He's headed to his seventh Sweet 16 appearance and he's made a Final Four appearance in 1998 while at Arkansas. But his most pivotal March moment may have been the last high school game he lost.
In the 1979 Class 4A championship game, Victoria's slow-down strategy stymied SOC 43-41, ending its 65-game winning streak. The next year, South Oak Cliff went 40-0 and won its third title in four years.
"If I'd have been on a 106-game winning streak, would I have taken that Louisiana Tech job?" Blair said. "Could I have let that streak go?"
Blair will be able to ponder that and all his other coaching decisions once he's retired and living at The Traditions Club. The Blairs have started building their home which will overlook the par-5 third hole.
Nan helped in the designs, though she says she probably won't retire until Gary does. She figures they will divide time between College Station and Arkansas, where their 27-year-old daughter, 22-year-old son and 5-year-old grandson live.
The home won't be finished for at least nine month. When it is, Blair plans to put up a hammock, which will be about a 138-yard shot to the green for the avid golfer, who landed his first hole-in-one last summer.
Could idle Marches and daily golf be in his near future?
"I definitely want to go for at least five more years," he said. "I owe that to the kids I've signed and committed to.
"I've got the energy. And then after those five years, I and the university will probably take it one year at a time and see where I am in terms of production. But I guarantee, I'll keep producing."
GARY BLAIR
Age: 63
Born: Dallas
High school: Bryan Adams ('63)
College: Texas Tech (B.A. '72; Master's '74)
Family: Married to Dr. Nan-Smith Blair for 29 years. Daughter Paige (27), son Matt (22) and grandson Logan (5).
Coaching stops: South Oak Cliff High, 1973-80 (239-18); assistant Louisiana Tech, 1980-85; Stephen F. Austin, 1985-93 (210-43); Arkansas, 1993-2003 (198-120); Texas A&M, 2003-present (129-65)
Community involvement: Blair has been a Rotarian for 20 years. For 15 years, the Gary Blair Celebrity Golf Classic has benefited Special Olympics, raising more than $100,000 annually in recent years.