Remembering Greg Gumbel: Viewers relied on him from Selection Sunday to ‘One Shining Moment’

The athlete has live coverage for 2025 March madness selection offer for men
Everly the man, Greg GOMBEL continues to make a welcome handshake. Erni Johnson responded … Fist?
An embarrassing exchange – still describing Johnson, continued, after a decade, as “very embarrassing” – perhaps two seconds. To Johnson, an old TV warrior, he seemed to be forever. However, if this should happen, for two or 20 seconds, it was agreed that no one other than Gumbel could have dealt with it smoothly.
For more than a quarter of a century, Gumbel presented calm in the maximum chaos in the sporty calendar, directing the viewers of the NCAA championship gently and smoothly from one exciting to the competition of the last marquee. He started from March Madness every year with the Sunday Selection offer and ended it through ejaculation to “one bright moment”.
“With certain offers, everything,” Johnson said. Athlete. “But in the selection on Sunday, all you need is Greg Gomepel and Arch. Many go to run this offer but frankly, it could have made him a single camera exchange: Here’s Greg, here is the bow, go.”
The tournament is here again, the first since the legendary sports broadcaster He died on December 28 At the age of 78 of cancer. Although he missed last March for the first time since he started in 1998 for unannounced reasons – which people now know were related to his disease – many were hoping to return to the studio this spring.
Gumbel descriptions of those who knew him better and worked with him longer than seduction and varied: good, elegant, soothing, attractive, amazingly funny. Above all, it cannot be eliminated.
Unless, of course, Charles Barclay was in the studio.
“When you can make Greg GOMBEL laugh,” Barclay said Athlete“This is when you know you spend a good day.”
CBS and Turner merged in 2011, bringing the TNT “INSIDE The NBA” crew to the NCAA championship coverage, and left Barkley loose to university basketball fans and Jumbel.
“I will never forget at the beginning, I am no longer in the studio, I went back to contacting games, so I am watching from the gym and I love,” Oh, my God, what is happening?! “When it became a little bit of the circus, the appearance on the face of Greg, you can say that it was upset – but only if you had worked with him and knew him. He was adaptive, he treated it well.”
Under the leadership of Gompel – including Johnson and Clared after returning to the studio in 2014 – the new group quickly found a rhythm, even if it continued to involve Barclay. An unforgettable moment on the air: Gomepel laughs in an irreplaceable way in response to the strange story of Barclay Bathing in his official uniform.
According to Gompel’s daughter, Michelle, her father loved the chaotic pace of madness, and the fact that no text can “work without stopping”. His widow, Marce, indicated that her husband is unable to predict basketball, and that every spring, regardless of the classified teams, if he called their names during the selection on Sunday, they will have a “opportunity to chase their dream.”
But Gumbel was more than one of the most reassuring and reassurances sounds. Barclay was considered by the king of my father’s jokes. He loved fallen stones with unparalleled passion, as more than 50 of her concerts attended. Pass the golf. “It’s a stupid game,” tell anyone listening. “You are wandering and chasing a ball – this is not a sport!” He had a “huge and private laugh”, where the president and CEO of CBS SPORTS wanted to describe it, as recognized by the viewers as much as the validity and warmth of the camera.
It was a path and a rare talent. He was also a husband and father and found.
Susan Smith, the first director of CBS SPORTS worked with Gomebel to broadcast football from the early 1990s, in this way: “Greg has always been the most wonderful man in the room – and he never knew her.”
Gumbel’s functional achievements included the first black broadcaster to play by playing a major sporting event when he did so in Super Bowl Xxxv in 2001. He won three Emmys, and three Olympic matches were brought over two networks and led broadcasting for everything from the American Football Association to the American Professional League. Not that he had ever wanted to show off.
Keel said: “He is a creative pioneer in space, but he was not interested in talking about it to the point that you tend to forget him.” It was the revelation even for me, especially as a black colleague man. I forgot some of the things he did. And believe me, he will not tell you. “
In CBS, Harold Bryant has become the first black executive product to oversee sports in any of the main broadcast networks. Bryant studied how Gomebel treated his first “first”.
“He didn’t want to be known as” Brieker, “said Bryant. He wanted to let his presence talk about himself, and took a lot.
“He was just saying,” I want to know that he is the best in my craft. “By always being the best, I showed that anyone can do this task, it is not limited to a certain type of people. He did not talk about the desire to break the template.”
Barclay said that Gomebel’s talent was always clear.
“It has always been at work – moving from sport to sport, which cannot be easy – you don’t have this type of profession until you are really good,” he said.
Although sitting on Chair 1, Gumbel never wanted to focus on it.
Years ago after calling Colts, Smith, Gompel and CBS created at St. Elmo, The Indianapolis Steak House, famous for shrimp cocktail. After being said to the group, the waiting was for two hours, and perhaps three hours, a few people paid Gomebel and suggested that his name be dropped. After all, his picture was hung on the celebrity wall.
Smith said: “He didn’t want any part of it.” After that, when the crew insisted on taking a photo standing next to the image wall, he was often fatal, and asked his colleagues, “What do we do? No one cares about who I am!”
Throughout the sports media, there are some broadcasters who have this great voice.
Despite this recognition of almost everyone on sports television, Gumbel has constantly postponed to his teammates.
“He loved the way to pave the way for others,” said Pearson, head of sports at CBS. “This is a large part of the reason for a good studio host because he was always looking to increase his colleagues and make them look good.”
Gumbel understands how to move brilliantly from one topic and another, takes the viewers smoothly through the entire threat. Perhaps the best thing for everyone working with him has never appeared. What viewers lived in their living rooms is the same thing that producers have experienced in the production truck and on the group.
This was the case regardless of the situation – highlighting the lack of work, a promotional offer is not read properly or Barkley needs to be eliminated.
Barclay said: “When we get out of the bars, Ernni used to do so,” Parkley said. “We may do that 20 times a year with him on TNT. But Greg will only see us once a year and he had to interact in the actual time. There is a talent for that. He never appeared confused.”
Many people who worked with Gumbel talked about his ability to break tension in the group, although he did not come at the expense of another person.
Kelog called it a “comedy of a wardrobe.” Barclaly Gomepel recalled “10 my father’s jokes per day, and they were terrible. You never knew if you were laughing because she was funny or because she was very radical.”
Because Gomebel’s actions revolve around sport, the stories printed on the minds of colleagues, friends and family are about life and conversations outside the court or the field.
Greg Gomebel was a private man, but his love for the fallen stones and his granddaughter, Riley, was not a secret. (With the permission of the GMALB family)
Michael Gowl worked as the Gompel morning during the American Football Association games for more than two decades. They traded family stories and holiday cards and entered with each other throughout the season. GLUC is still holding himself waiting for the regular dinner plans for the Gumbel Friday for the next day in any American Football Association city to which they were heading.
“He loved the stones, and everyone knew, he saw them at a concert several times. For 24 years, I couldn’t tell him that I loved the Beatles more,” Glock admitted laughing. “I didn’t want to disappoint him.”
In the 1992 Winter Olympics, Olympic Gompel, the CBS host, canceled the plane in Albeerville, France, and noted Smith, struggling. On crutches after breaking her foot, Tawfiq could not luggage. Gompel, who has not yet met Smith, rushed to help.
“Perhaps there were 200 people coming down from that plane, and this man is a star in CBS, running to help someone he does not know,” Smith said.
In the fourth final of 2011 in Houston, Person shared a car with Gumbel to Reliant Stadium. Jumbel Pearson asked about his interests outside the sport. They spent the recommendations of the entire trade book after discovering that they preferred the same suspicious authors as Vince Flynn, Harlan Copen and Soo Grafton (Gompel also recommended John Sandford and Lee Child).
However, there is no doubt that the real highlight of Gomebel’s life came in 2012 when his granddaughter Riley was born. Although Gumbel was an intensively private person – many people in CBS did not know that he was diagnosed with cancer even shortly before his death – he was an unprecedented subject of Riley.
“The photos and videos”, “were not suspended.”
Riley’s favorite memories with her grandfather include dances in the kitchen, telling the judge jokes and insisting that you get to know the fallen stones.
“He has always sent me his favorite songs that I think I love, and I ended up with the love of every one,” Riley wrote in an email message. Athlete. “Whenever I hear one of those songs on the radio, such as” brown sugar “, I always think about and how to communicate with me from the top.”
A few years ago, when Riley was in the fifth grade, her school put a morning offer. When Riley’s role was to the anchor, her parents registered that and sent him to the grandfather to get reactions.
Her next time in front of the camera, shine.
She said, “I remembered all the things that I taught me.” “Speak slower, pronounce words with spelling and always smile.”
With March Madness tips this week, Gumbel’s absence will be felt. Michelle attended the first four finals with her father in Houston in 2011, “Watching what he is doing always better.”
“I feel lucky because I had the opportunity to grow in watching my father throughout these years,” said Michelle via email. “I will largely lack its transmission operations after contacting the game or hosting, and I say good night with goodbye,” goodbye and very long. “
(Clarification: Dimitrius Robinson / Athlete; Pictures: Kyle Terada / USA TODAY via imagn photos)