When Greg Gumbel was named host of the CBS NFL pregame show in 1990, he was viewed as a departure for the network. Brent Musberger had been host of The NFL Today for the past 15 years, and a lot of people were tired of his shtick. He dominated the show, and much of the network's sports coverage. Reporters wondered whether Gumbel, who had previously called NFL games and hosted NCAA men’s basketball tournament coverage for CBS, would be another preempting pregame personality.
He wasn’t, instead guiding the show in a lower key. Gumbel hosted in the studio with Terry Bradshaw, while Lesley Visser and Pat O’Brien handled features. The new host wanted to be the conductor, not the star. “If Terry stars on that show,” Gumbel told the AP right before starting, “then I’ll have done my job.”
As a kid tuning into football, I didn't know any of this, of course. The pregame show was when I’d really start to get excited for the Eagles, who usually played at 1 p.m., and Gumbel was the guy who would bring me there. Thinking back, the show then was a lot less raucous than today's pregame offerings. There was just one Terry Bradshaw at the desk, rather than four different versions at varying volume. Gumbel was a big fan of the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones—that 1990 AP story mentioned that he could “even name the opening acts” of the Stones’ last seven tours—but he played the straight man on the pregame show.
Gumbel died on Friday of complications related to cancer, according to a statement released by his family. He was 78. The CBS pregame show was one part of a wide-ranging career that involved covering pro baseball, the Olympics, and the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Gumbel was the kind of guy everyone calls something like a “consummate pro,” but he really was. If Gumbel was at the desk, the viewer was getting the competence and care they deserved.
Gumbel managed to keep things straightforward on air without becoming too serious about anything. He was jokey and outgoing. “The only thing Greg loved more than laughing was making other people laugh,” CBS analyst Seth Davis wrote in tribute. “When you were around him, that’s what you usually did.”
Greg chided his younger brother, Bryant Gumbel, for getting too serious after moving from sports to news. In 1992, he mocked him for covering things he thought were beneath him: “Did you see that [Bryant] had Richard Nixon on Today? I mean, why? Give me a break.” Greg also knew what mattered; he reported on Disco Demolition Night for Chicago’s WMAQ-TV.
Gumbel was self-effacing about his increasing number of duties for CBS; he became the network’s No. 2 baseball play-by-play announcer and nabbed a solo role hosting the Olympics. “I’m constantly amazed at the kinds of responsibilities I’m given and that sane-thinking people would trust those things to me,” he said in 1992. It was that kind of attitude, I think, that made him so enjoyable on television. He was professional but never too serious, and behind this self-deprecation was a notorious desire to improve his craft.
Gumbel said he left ESPN in 1986 for MSG, considered a lower-profile gig, because he wanted to do play-by-play in order to become more well-rounded. Lots of people work hard in that way, but not everyone can have that drive while remaining grounded and supportive of their peers. Gumbel could do it all, across a media career that lasted over 50 years. And he was right: Disco Demolition Night was a much better assignment than an interview with Nixon in 1992.
