By Hayleigh Gowans
Staff Writer
On Wednesday, May 3, a familiar face and voice to local sports fans — sportscaster Greg Gumbel — will be the keynote speaker at the Boy Scouts of America Longhouse Council’s annual Boypower Dinner fundraiser.
Gumbel is an American sports broadcaster and announcer with more than 40 years of experience in the industry. He has covered events for Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association, National Football League, the Men’s NCAA Championship Tournament, the summer and winter Olympic games, World Figure Skating Championships and the Daytona 500. In the fall, he announces the play-by-play of NFL games for CBS Sports. Gumbel has hosted Super Bowl XXVI in Minneapolis, Super Bowl XXX in Tempe and Super Bowl XXXII in San Diego.
Gumbel is a three-time Emmy award winner and the 2007 honoree of the Pat Summerall award for his outstanding work in broadcasting. He is involved as a member of the National Board of Advisors for the March of Dimes, has become a member of the St. Jude Children’s Hospital Sports Council and is also a member of the Board of Regents at his alma mater, Loras College, in Dubuque, Iowa.
The Boypower Dinner has a long history of bringing famous faces to Syracuse to speak to a group of people willing to buy a ticket to support the activities of the Longhouse Council, which covers the counties of Cayuga, Jefferson, Lewis, Onondaga, Oswego and St. Lawrence. Through the Boypower event, 26 percent of their operational budget is raised.
The 2017 Boypower Dinner will honor Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick as the Distinguished Citizen, and Dr. David Rogers, president of Morrisville State College, is the Boypower Chairman. It will be held at 5 p.m. on May 3 at the Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center in Syracuse.
For more information about the Boypower Dinner event, or to purchase tickets, go to cnyscouts.org/boypower or call 315-463-0201.
The Eagle Bulletin got a chance to speak with Gumbel about his career before he comes to Syracuse on May 4.
What inspired you to get into your career of sports announcing and broadcasting?
I wasn’t inspired by anything other than number one — the love of sports ever since I can remember and number two — the opportunity to get into it. It wasn’t even something I pursued. I went to a liberal arts school which did not have broadcasting as one of it’s disciplines.
The fact is I was an English major but I really thought I was going to be a baseball player. That didn’t work out and eventually I thought I was going to be and English teacher and I kind of changed horses after I graduated. I had a couple of jobs I thought I was pretty good in, but none that really impressed me. And then I got a call from my brother who told me that the local NBC affiliate in Chicago was looking for a weekend sportscaster. I was living in Detroit at the time and was looking at a way to get back to Chicago because that’s where I grew up. I auditioned and two weeks later they said ‘yeah we want you.’ So this is where my career began.
I do want to point out a lot of people pursue their dreams from the get-go. They get on campus and say, “I want to be a radio guy” or “I want to go into television.” I never had the opportunity to do any of that nor do I think it ever crossed my mind until the opportunity presented itself.
You have a prolific career in announcing popular sporting events. Do any moments stand out to you?
There are things I’m certainly proud of. I’m proud to have been a part of three Olympic broadcasts and to have called two Super Bowls and do things like the Final Four. I think that pride for me simply stems from the fact that I have the opportunity to be present and to have people not only listen to what I do, but actually enjoy it from time-to-time. I work at it with my network and my peers and my coworkers. That kind of stuff sits well with me and I don’t go home and think about it too much. I do it and I’m glad to do it, and then I kind of move on to the next one.
Can you walk me through what a “day-in-the-life” for yourself looks like?
It depends on the time of the year. During football season, the week kind of goes like this: I get home from my game on Sunday night, Monday morning I send out emails to get preliminary information to the PR guys of the two teams I’m doing the following week. In addition, I get some information from my statistician and I get some information from CBS Sports research.
Then I get into making up with what in this business are called “the boards,” which basically have the names, numbers and statistical information on the people that will be in the game. So I can tell who number 80 is, how tall he is, how much he weighs, what year this is for him, any sort of statistics I could need about him. I spend Monday and Tuesday doing that, and on Wednesday morning, I tear up the boards and start all over again. Repetition helps the memory.
We fly out on Friday, and we have dinner Friday evening as a crew. Saturday morning we go out to the home team’s facility, watch the practice and do interviews with selected players and coaches. Then come back to our hotel, wait for the visiting team to arrive in town, go over to their team and do the same thing as far as interviews. Then return to our hotel and have a production meeting to talk about various aspects of the broadcast. And then I’ll go up and write a couple of things.
On Sunday, we go to the stadium, do the game and then run to the airport, catch the first flight home and start all over again.
Have you seen the industry change much over time?
Absolutely, there’s certainly more sports happening than ever before, more airtime availability. I got to ESPN when it was only a year-and-a-half old and people thought it was a joke because it was all sports all the time. Now you can find a great number of different places that are all sports all the time on both TV and radio. There are whole channels dedicated to the NBA, the NFL, Major League Baseball, The Golf Channel.
The fact is it’s become very specialized. You can find almost anything you want. It might not be great as far as ratings go but the fact of the matter is that it’s available to the public and I think that’s a huge difference. When I was working for a local news station — people would come up to me and say “You don’t show any soccer,” and I’d go, “I hate soccer!” I told them I barely have time for the Cubs and the White Socks highlights, the Bulls, the Blackhawks or the Bears. By the time you get around to it, you have to decided, “Am I going to show a soccer goal, or a hole-in-one from golf?” In my early career it was one of those things where I was handed two-and-a-half minutes on the 10 o’clock news and there was a lot to do in that.
When ESPN came to me, they said, “How would you like to go on the air and do a whole hour worth on sports on SportsCenter?” That sounded great to me and that was pretty radical at the time.
In your career, have you had to overcome anything to get to where you are?
I think it’s a pretty safe guess to say you’re in competition with people over what you do. I think people who didn’t think so would be extremely naive. I think because it’s a competitive business, you have very little room for bad performance. So you really want every broadcast to be a great one — not just a good one — you really want to do a great job.
Before the game you should talk with your producer, director and co-host about the things that are going to be important, things we have to look for. At halftime, you kind of update yourself — have we done this, have we covered this? At the end of the game, even on the way to the airport, you talk about if you missed anything. I think that all a part of being thorough in what you do and as long as you do that, I think you can be a half a step ahead of the game.
You have been involved in giving back to your community through the March of Dimes, St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and at your alma mater Loras College. Why do you believe it’s important to give back?
So I don’t look like a greedy S.O.B. (He laughs.) Although I say that with a laugh, it’s true. I feel like I’ve been very lucky in the things that I do. I was just back up to my alma mater last week, There was a Board of Regents meeting. I was also asked back to speak to the sports marketing classes they have.
I also had the opportunity to reunite with some former college baseball teammates. We went to a separate across the river in East Dubuque, Illinois, and the president joined us and we spent the night having a few drinks and telling lies about when we used to play, how we used to play. Gosh, some of those guys I hadn’t seen in nearly 50 years. That’s kind of amazing and surprising.
I think a lot of my alma mater because as I’ve told people before, college is where I found myself. I remember when I was leaving to go to high school my mom said, “These are going to be the best days of your life.” And when I got through it I said, “I was the worst days of my life!” I did not like high school at all! But when I went out to college, I met nice people, learned how to react and interact with people, how to live with other people. Some people miss the point That’s why I insisted my daughter go away to school. She was thinking about sticking around at home but I said, “No. I love you but you’ve got to go.” You’ve got to learn how to deal with other people, how to make your own decisions, how to run your own life — which to me is damn near the most important thing you were learn coming out of college.
I’ve been with the March of Dimes somewhere around 22 or 23 years now. I was actually heading to Detroit to speak at a March of Dimes event and I was on the same flight as the president of the March of Dimes. When we got off the plane, she hijacked me and took me to a hospital and took me to a neonatal intensive care unit. She showed me what premature babies and births are all about — the crises facing them and how the March of Dimes devotes so much time, energy and money in order to help fix these brith defect and — to use the phrase of the organization — to support the continuation of having healthy babies.
While we were walking through, there was a man holding his daughter who was about two months premature. There was a time where the survival wasn’t possible back then. And he was able to take his wedding band from his finger and put it over her had slide it up her arm. That’s how thin and small and fragile this little baby was. I remember asking the doctor how long this child has, and the doctor said she’s going to make it.
The fact is over the years and with medical expertise and knowing more than we ever did before, survival rate has skyrocketed. You can’t argue with that, that’s a good thing. I like being a part of and organization that helps with that.
What do you hope the people in attendance take away from your keynote speech at the Longhouse Council Boypower event?
This one’s a little different for me because my presentations are usually about 50 minutes to an hour long. But for this one, they asked me to give 15 minutes. I thought, “Wow!” and at first blush, that seems easy. Then you have to figure out what do you pick and choose to say and how you can make it meaningful in a short amount of time.
I would hope I can lend a voice to that of the Boy Scouts, who I think do a terrific job of raising young people and helping them become contributors to society. I have been fortunate who have run across people who have become contributors to society as well and I think if I can share that with them, they can know they’re on the right track.
What do you hope you’ve been able to accomplish throughout your career?
I hope I can continue to be in my career. It’s kind of funny but also kind of true because I don’t know many people who have been around it as long as I have — gosh I started in March of 1973. That’s a long time to have been in broadcasting, especially in a field where if the boss changes, sometimes he changes the people.
I’m glad to have been able to do what I’ve loved to do for as long as I can, but there’s never any guarantee going forward. I’m glad CBS enjoys what I do as well. That is something I point to for myself and that it’s kind of an amazing thing I’m still able to do what I love to do.
If I contribute to the enjoyment for other people who are watching — that’s a plus too. From my own experience I can’t say every person calling an event I’ve enjoyed. There are some that I will reach for a remote the way Roy Rodgers reaches for his gun. Whether people do that to me — I’m sure there are that do every once in a while — but I hope there are more who stick with it and hear what I have to say.
