Before Todd Pletcher became arguably the best horse trainer in the world, he and fraternity buddy Chris Halligan were sportswriters for the Arizona Daily Wildcat.

They would excuse themselves from the Pi Kappa Alpha house in the mid-1980s, telling their brothers they were going to the library for mandatory study hall hours.

The friends would sit on the third floor of the UA library, stare out the window, and cover the intramural games held below at Bear Down Field. They made $11 a story, with headlines like "Laughing members look on as Sig Eps slaughter defenseless puppies." The opposing team, of course, was called the Slush Puppies.

Hundreds of stories have been told about Pletcher this week, in Sports Illustrated, USA Today and the CBS Evening News, to name a few, about how he's tied a record by having five horses in the Kentucky Derby but has never won the big one.

You wonder how Halligan would write the story.

Pletcher, 39, wants to win more for owners than for himself, Halligan said. He was reminded of the UA basketball season in 2001. Following the death of coach Lute Olson's wife, Bobbi, on New Year's Day, the Wildcats advanced to the NCAA championship game.

"In 2001, with Lute Olson, I think as much as anything, they all wanted to win it for Bobbi," Halligan said. "That's what it was about. Everybody got that."

A different kinda guy

Pletcher has five horses in today's race, Cowtown Cat, Sam P., Scat Daddy, Circular Quay and Any Given Saturday. Only two trainers, Nick Zito in 2005 and Pletcher's mentor, D. Wayne Lukas, in 1996, have saddled five horses at Churchill Downs.

Pletcher, an upstate New York resident, won more money in purses last year, $26.8 million, than anyone in the history of racing. He employs 150 people who train almost 200 horses at eight different farms around the country.

But he is 0 for 14 in the Kentucky Derby entering today's race. He has never won either of the two other jewels in the Triple Crown the Belmont Stakes and the Preakness.

"I still don't feel like in years past that we've brought the best horse to the race," he told reporters at Churchill Downs this week. "I'm hoping this year that maybe one of ours is.

"I would say that this group is the most accomplished (of my Derby entries). This group has the strongest credentials, the most accomplishments, the best breeding to get to this level."

Pletcher will enter today's Derby on a high after his filly Rags to Riches won the Kentucky Oaks on Friday at Churchill Downs

He seems to have revolutionized the sport, he's as much the businessman as he is the trainer. The trainer side runs through his veins; as early as age 7, he helped his father, Jake, at Ruidoso Downs in southeastern New Mexico. Jake Pletcher trained quarter horses and thoroughbreds throughout the Southwest. The summer after his junior and senior years at a San Antonio high school, Todd worked at tracks in Boosier City, La., and Omaha, Neb., learning the ropes.

He enrolled in the UA's Race Track Industry Program in the fall of 1985.

He, Halligan and David Lerner joined the fraternity, building it up from a group of seven their freshman year to 85 their senior year.

"At 22 of the 23 houses, the pitch was girls, beer, parties," Halligan said. "At Pike, it was different. It was build something, be a leader, be part of a team.

"The people that we attracted were different kinda guys."

During the summer between his sophomore and junior years, Pletcher worked for Lukas at Arlington Park in Chicago. The next summer, he worked for another Hall of Famer, Charlie Whittingham, at Hollywood Park in Los Angeles.

Since graduating in 1989, Pletcher has become one of the program's most famous alums along with trainer Bob Baffert, a Nogales, Ariz., native.

"For me, it's very interesting," said Wendy Davis, the program's associate coordinator. "When Baffert was in the limelight, they'd talk about Bob being a graduate of the University of Arizona and the racetrack industry program. We got a lot of miles from that.

"With Todd, the media in general doesn't brand him as, 'Oh my gosh! A college graduate!'

"He looks the part. He is the part."

When Pletcher has lunch with his college buddy Lerner, they talk business as much as horses.

"Payroll, tax laws, personnel," said Lerner, the COO of an office products distributor in Los Angeles. "And Todd will be the first to tell you he relies on his middle managers.

"That's one of the very strong things he got from the U of A, the business side."

Pletcher, who got his trainer's license in December 1995 after working under Lukas, has been at the forefront of using the Internet to help owners track their horses' workouts. He has operations based all over the country, including two in Kentucky, two in New York and one in Illinois. He lives not far from Belmont Park on Long Island.

Halligan, the old sportswriting buddy who became a highly successful entrepreneur, has his theory about Pletcher's success.

Millionaire owners are attracted to other smart businesspeople, and Pletcher fits that mold better than most trainers.

"Todd grew up on the backstretch; he's a horse guy through and through, but he's different than those guys," Halligan said. "In addition to being a horse guy, he's a rock-star businessman.

"He's by far the most professional and sharp person available; he's the person they're used to interacting with.

"They're not used to dealing with Damon Runyon characters. They're used to dealing with Donald Trump."

The "big monster"

The Kentucky Derby is not the Super Bowl. It's not the Daytona 500.

It's the biggest spectacle in horse racing, but with 20 3-year-old thoroughbreds crammed side-by-side on a track usually occupied by half that many horses, it's a bit different.

"They have to peak at the right time and the right day," Davis said. "Because of the sheer number of horses running, you have to have a great horse, and be lucky."

Trainers who have won the Derby sometimes drift off into the abyss just as quickly, making it the "Best Supporting Actor" of the equine world.

Said Halligan: "It's the Sun Bowl."

Davis likened it to when Tiger Woods played at the Accenture World Match Play Championships in Tucson this year.

"It was just so different," she said. "That's what the Derby is."

Fairly or not, the Kentucky Derby is the one line of Pletcher's résumé that has yet to be filled in.

"There's always some knucklehead that hollers out 'Mickelson!' " Halligan said, referring to Phil Mickelson, the golfer who for years was the best to never win a major. "He'd laugh at that. But to get that guy to shut up, that'd be nice."

Said Lerner: "I don't think it bothers him, per se. But I think he'd like to win this one."

Pletcher's friends will watch the Derby on television and think this is the year he wins one. But still, they won't let Pletcher be defined by what happens today.

"The thing everybody wants to be true is that somehow the Kentucky Derby is a big monster under Todd Pletcher's bed," Halligan said. "But it's just not. He's the most successful person in the world at the craft that he's in."