Ever the gentleman, Greg Gumbel reached out to supply a welcoming handshake. Ernie Johnson responded with … a fist bump?
The awkward trade — one Johnson nonetheless describes, a decade later, as “so embarrassing” — lasted possibly two seconds. To Johnson, a TV veteran, it felt like an eternity. And but if it needed to occur, for 2 seconds or 20, it’s agreed that nobody aside from Gumbel might have dealt with it so easily.
For greater than 1 / 4 of a century, Gumbel supplied calm in probably the most chaotic stretch of the sports activities calendar, gently and seamlessly guiding NCAA Match viewers from one thrilling upset to a different marquee matchup. He kicked off March Insanity every year with the Sunday choice present and ended it by tossing to “One Shining Second.”
“With sure reveals, it’s all about, ‘let’s add a bunch of bells and whistles,’” Johnson informed The Athletic. “However on Choice Sunday, all you wanted was Greg Gumbel and a bracket. A lot goes into working that present however truthfully, you might have made it a single digital camera shoot: Right here’s Greg, right here’s the bracket, go.”
The event is right here once more, the primary for the reason that legendary sportscaster died on Dec. 28 on the age of 78 of most cancers. Although he missed final March for the primary time since he began in 1998 for undisclosed causes — which individuals now know have been associated to his sickness — many hoped he’d be again in studio this spring.
The descriptions of Gumbel from those that knew him finest and labored with him longest are flattering and assorted: Variety, stylish, soothing, charismatic, surprisingly humorous. Above all else, unflappable.
Until, in fact, Charles Barkley was within the studio.
“When you will get Greg Gumbel to snigger,” Barkley informed The Athletic, “that’s when you’re having an excellent day.”
CBS and Turner merged in 2011, bringing TNT’s “Contained in the NBA” crew into NCAA Match protection, letting Barkley free on school basketball followers, and Gumbel.
“I’ll always remember at the start, I’m not in studio anymore, I used to be again calling video games, so I’m watching from the fitness center and I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh what is going on?!’” basketball analyst Clark Kellogg, one other mainstay within the CBS studio through the NCAA Match, recalled whereas laughing. “When it turned a little bit little bit of a circus, the look on Greg’s face, you might inform he was flummoxed — however provided that you’d labored with him and knew him. He was so adaptable, he dealt with it so properly.”
Led by Gumbel — and together with Johnson and Clark after he moved again to the studio in 2014 — the brand new group rapidly discovered a rhythm that labored, even when it continued to contain Barkley being Barkley. One notably memorable on-air second: Gumbel laughing uncontrollably in response to Barkley’s weird story about showering in his uniform.
Based on Gumbel’s daughter, Michelle, her dad cherished the chaotic tempo of March Insanity, and the truth that no script might ever sustain with the “continuous motion.” His widow, Marcy, pointed to her husband appreciating basketball’s unpredictability and that each spring, it doesn’t matter what groups have been ranked, if he known as their names throughout Choice Sunday, they’d have “an opportunity to chase their dream.”
However Gumbel was a lot multiple of school hoops’ most trusted and reassuring voices. Barkley thought-about him the king of pop jokes. He cherished the Rolling Stones with an unmatched ardour, attending greater than 50 of their concert events. He despised golf. “It’s a silly sport,” he’d inform anybody who would hear. “You stroll round and chase a ball — that’s not a sport!” He had a “enormous, particular snigger,” as CBS Sports activities president and CEO David Berson appreciated to explain it, as recognizable to viewers as a lot as his on-camera authenticity and heat.
He was a trailblazer and a uncommon expertise. He was additionally a husband, dad and grandpa.
Suzanne Smith, CBS Sports activities’ first feminine director who labored with Gumbel on soccer broadcasts beginning within the early Nineteen Nineties, put it this fashion: “Greg was all the time the best man within the room — and he by no means knew it.”
Gumbel’s profession accomplishments included being the primary Black play-by-play announcer to name a significant sporting occasion when he did so at Tremendous Bowl XXXV in 2001. He received three Emmys, anchored three Olympic Video games throughout two networks and led broadcast protection of the whole lot from the NFL to the NBA. Not that he ever needed to brag about it.
“He’s an iconic pioneer within the area, however he was so bored with speaking about it that you just’d are likely to neglect it,” Kellogg stated. “It was a revelation even for me, particularly as a fellow Black man. I had forgotten a few of the trailblazing issues he’d performed. And consider me, he wasn’t going to inform you.”
At CBS, Harold Bryant turned the primary Black govt producer to supervise sports activities at any of the most important broadcast networks. Bryant studied how Gumbel dealt with being “the primary” himself.
“He didn’t wish to be generally known as the groundbreaker,” Bryant stated. “He needed to let his presence converse for itself, and I took quite a bit from that.
“He would simply say, ‘I wish to be generally known as the most effective at my craft.’ By all the time being the most effective, he confirmed that anyone can do that job, it’s not restricted to at least one explicit kind of individual. He didn’t discuss wanting to interrupt the mildew.”
Barkley stated Gumbel’s expertise was all the time clear.
“For so long as he was within the enterprise — and to go from sport to sport, which might’t be straightforward — you don’t have that kind of profession till you’re actually, actually good,” he stated.
Regardless of sitting within the No. 1 chair, Gumbel by no means needed the concentrate on him.
Years in the past after calling a Colts sport, Smith, Gumbel and the CBS crew wound up at St. Elmo, the Indianapolis steak home well-known for its shrimp cocktail. After the group was informed the wait was two, possibly three hours, a couple of folks nudged Gumbel and advised he drop his identify. In any case, his picture held on the celeb wall.
“He needed no a part of it,” Smith stated. Afterward, when the crew insisted he take a photograph standing by the picture wall, he was principally mortified, asking his colleagues, “What are we doing? Nobody cares who I’m!”
All through sports activities media there are “sure broadcasters who’ve that big-time voice,” Smith stated. “Greg Gumbel was one in every of them. If he was calling it, you knew it was an essential, particular occasion.”
Regardless of that acknowledgment from almost everybody in sports activities tv, Gumbel continuously deferred to his teammates.
“He did love paving the best way for others,” stated Berson, the CBS Sports activities president. “That’s a giant a part of why he was such an excellent studio host as a result of he was all the time trying to tee up his colleagues and make them look good.”
Gumbel understood how you can deftly transition from one subject and analyst to a different, easily taking viewers by means of a complete rundown. Maybe better of all for everybody working with him, he by no means appeared rattled; what viewers skilled of their dwelling rooms is identical factor producers skilled within the manufacturing truck and on set.
This was the case regardless of the scenario — a spotlight not working, a promo not being learn accurately or Barkley needing to be corralled.
“After we go off the rails, Ernie’s used to it,” Barkley stated. “We do it in all probability 20 instances a yr with him on TNT. However Greg would solely see us every year and he needed to react in actual time. There’s a expertise to that. He by no means appeared flustered.”
Quite a few individuals who labored with Gumbel spoke about his potential to crack pressure on set, although it by no means got here at another person’s expense.
Kellogg known as him “a closet comic.” Barkley recalled Gumbel informed “10 dad jokes a day, they usually have been simply terrible. You by no means knew when you have been laughing as a result of it was humorous or as a result of they have been so nerdy.”
For as a lot as Gumbel’s work revolved round sports activities, the tales printed on the minds of colleagues, family and friends are about life and conversations past the court docket or subject.
Greg Gumbel was a non-public man, however his love of the Rolling Stones and his granddaughter, Riley, have been no secret. (Courtesy of the Gumbel household)
Michael Gluc labored as Gumbel’s spotter throughout NFL video games for greater than 20 years. They traded household tales and vacation playing cards and checked in with one another all through the offseason. Gluc nonetheless catches himself ready for Gumbel’s common Friday e mail sharing dinner plans for the subsequent day in no matter NFL metropolis they have been headed to.
“He cherished the Stones, everybody knew that, he noticed them in live performance a number of instances. And for twenty-four years, I couldn’t inform him I appreciated the Beatles extra,” Gluc confessed, laughing. “I didn’t wish to disappoint him.”
On the 1992 Winter Olympics, Gumbel’s first as CBS host, he de-boarded the aircraft in Albertville, France, and observed Smith struggling. On crutches after breaking her foot, she couldn’t juggle her baggage. Gumbel, who’d but to fulfill Smith, rushed to assist.
“There have been in all probability 200 folks getting off that aircraft, and this man is a celebrity at CBS, working over to assist somebody he doesn’t know,” Smith stated.
On the 2011 Closing 4 in Houston, Berson shared a automotive with Gumbel to Reliant Stadium. Gumbel requested Berson about his pursuits outdoors of sports activities. They spent all the journey buying and selling e book suggestions after discovering they most popular the identical suspense authors like Vince Flynn, Harlan Coben and Sue Grafton (Gumbel additionally really helpful John Sandford and Lee Little one).
And but there is no such thing as a query that the true spotlight of Gumbel’s life got here in 2012 when his granddaughter Riley was born. Although Gumbel was an intensely non-public individual — quite a few folks at CBS didn’t know he’d been identified with most cancers till shortly earlier than his loss of life — one subject he by no means shied from was Riley.
“The images and movies,” Kellogg stated, “have been unceasing.”
Riley’s favourite recollections along with her grandpa embody dance-offs within the kitchen, telling knock-knock jokes and his insistence that she additionally get aware of the Rolling Stones.
“He would all the time ship me his favourite songs that he’d suppose I’d like, and I ended up loving every one,” Riley wrote in an e mail to The Athletic. “At any time when I hear a kind of songs on the radio, akin to ‘Brown Sugar,’ I all the time consider him and the way he’s speaking with me from above.”
Just a few years in the past, when Riley was within the fifth grade, her college put collectively a morning present. When it was Riley’s flip to anchor, her mother and father recorded it and despatched it to Grandpa for suggestions.
Her subsequent time in entrance of the digital camera, she shined.
“I remembered all of the issues he had taught me,” she stated. “Speak slower, pronounce phrases with diction and all the time smile.”
As March Insanity ideas this week, Gumbel’s absence might be felt. Michelle attended her first and solely Closing 4 along with her dad in Houston in 2011, proudly “watching him do what he’s all the time performed finest.”
“I really feel lucky to have had the chance to develop up watching my dad all these years,” Michelle stated through e mail. “I’ll enormously miss his send-offs after calling the sport or internet hosting, saying goodnight with a heartfelt, ‘Goodbye and so lengthy.’”
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photographs: Kyle Terada / USA At present Community through Imagn Pictures)
