The Athletic has reside protection of the 2025 Males’s March Insanity Choice Present
Ever the gentleman, Greg Gumbel reached out to supply a welcoming handshake. Ernie Johnson responded with … a fist bump?
The awkward alternate — 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 offered calm in essentially 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 exhibits, 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 operating that present however actually, you could possibly have made it a single digicam 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 had 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 various: Variety, stylish, soothing, charismatic, surprisingly humorous. Above all else, unflappable.
Except, after all, Charles Barkley was within the studio.
“When you may get Greg Gumbel to snigger,” Barkley informed The Athletic, “that’s when you already know you’re having a superb 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 firstly, 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 occurring?!’” basketball analyst Clark Kellogg, one other mainstay within the CBS studio in the course of the NCAA Match, recalled whereas laughing. “When it turned just a little little bit of a circus, the look on Greg’s face, you could possibly inform he was flummoxed — however provided that you’d labored with him and knew him. He was so adaptable, he dealt with it so nicely.”
Led by Gumbel — and together with Johnson and Clark after he moved again to the studio in 2014 — the brand new group shortly 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.
In line with Gumbel’s daughter, Michelle, her dad beloved 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 had 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 a couple of of faculty hoops’ most trusted and reassuring voices. Barkley thought of him the king of pop jokes. He beloved the Rolling Stones with an unmatched ardour, attending greater than 50 of their live shows. 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 “big, particular snigger,” as CBS Sports activities president and CEO David Berson preferred 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 Nineties, put it this manner: “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 wished to brag about it.
“He’s an iconic pioneer within the area, however he was so tired of speaking about it that you just’d are inclined to neglect it,” Kellogg stated. “It was a revelation even for me, particularly as a fellow Black man. I had forgotten a number of the trailblazing issues he’d performed. And imagine me, he wasn’t going to let you know.”
At CBS, Harold Bryant turned the primary Black government producer to supervise sports activities at any of the main 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 wished to let his presence communicate for itself, and I took so much 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 specific sort of individual. He didn’t speak about 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 may’t be straightforward — you don’t have that sort of profession till you’re actually, actually good,” he stated.
Regardless of sitting within the No. 1 chair, Gumbel by no means wished the give attention to 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 individuals nudged Gumbel and advised he drop his identify. In spite of everything, his picture held on the superstar wall.
“He wished no a part of it,” Smith stated. Afterward, when the crew insisted he take a photograph standing by the picture wall, he was largely 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 necessary, particular occasion.”
Regardless of that acknowledgment from almost everybody in sports activities tv, Gumbel consistently deferred to his teammates.
“He did love paving the way in which for others,” stated Berson, the CBS Sports activities president. “That’s an enormous a part of why he was such a superb 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 one can deftly transition from one matter and analyst to a different, easily taking viewers by a complete rundown. Maybe better of all for everybody working with him, he by no means appeared rattled; what viewers skilled of their residing rooms is identical factor producers skilled within the manufacturing truck and on set.
This was the case irrespective of the state of affairs — a spotlight not working, a promo not being learn accurately or Barkley needing to be corralled.
“Once 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 capability to crack stress 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, and so they had been simply terrible. You by no means knew in the event you had been laughing as a result of it was humorous or as a result of they had 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, had 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 electronic mail sharing dinner plans for the subsequent day in no matter NFL metropolis they had been headed to.
“He beloved 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 preferred 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 airplane in Albertville, France, and observed Smith struggling. On crutches after breaking her foot, she couldn’t juggle her baggage. Gumbel, who’d but to satisfy Smith, rushed to assist.
“There have been in all probability 200 individuals getting off that airplane, and this man is a famous person at CBS, operating over to assist somebody he doesn’t know,” Smith stated.
On the 2011 Ultimate 4 in Houston, Berson shared a automobile with Gumbel to Reliant Stadium. Gumbel requested Berson about his pursuits exterior of sports activities. They spent your entire 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 Baby).
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 individuals at CBS didn’t know he’d been identified with most cancers till shortly earlier than his loss of life — one matter he by no means shied from was Riley.
“The photographs and movies,” Kellogg stated, “had been unceasing.”
Riley’s favourite recollections together with her grandpa embrace 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 assume I’d like, and I ended up loving every one,” Riley wrote in an electronic mail to The Athletic. “Every time 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.”
A number of years in the past, when Riley was within the fifth grade, her faculty put collectively a morning present. When it was Riley’s flip to anchor, her dad and mom recorded it and despatched it to Grandpa for suggestions.
Her subsequent time in entrance of the digicam, she shined.
“I remembered all of the issues he had taught me,” she stated. “Discuss slower, pronounce phrases with diction and all the time smile.”
As March Insanity suggestions this week, Gumbel’s absence might be felt. Michelle attended her first and solely Ultimate 4 together 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 by way of electronic 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; Pictures: Kyle Terada / USA Right now Community by way of Imagn Pictures)