The Athletic has live coverage of the 2025 Men’s March Madness Selection Show

Ever the gentleman, Greg Gumbel reached out to offer a welcoming handshake. Ernie Johnson responded with … a fist bump?

The awkward exchange — one Johnson still describes, a decade later, as “so embarrassing” — lasted maybe two seconds. To Johnson, a TV veteran, it felt like an eternity. And yet if it had to happen, for two seconds or 20, it’s agreed that no one other than Gumbel could have handled it so smoothly.

For more than a quarter of a century, Gumbel provided calm in the most chaotic stretch of the sports calendar, gently and seamlessly guiding NCAA Tournament viewers from one thrilling upset to another marquee matchup. He kicked off March Madness each year with the Sunday selection show and ended it by tossing to “One Shining Moment.”

“With certain shows, it’s all about, ‘let’s add a bunch of bells and whistles,’” Johnson told The Athletic. “But on Selection Sunday, all you needed was Greg Gumbel and a bracket. So much goes into running that show but honestly, you could have made it a single camera shoot: Here’s Greg, here’s the bracket, go.”

The tournament is here again, the first since the legendary sportscaster died on Dec. 28 at the age of 78 of cancer. Though he missed last March for the first time since he started in 1998 for undisclosed reasons — which people now know were related to his illness — many hoped he’d be back in studio this spring.

The descriptions of Gumbel from those who knew him best and worked with him longest are flattering and varied: Kind, classy, soothing, charismatic, surprisingly funny. Above all else, unflappable.

Unless, of course, Charles Barkley was in the studio.

“When you can get Greg Gumbel to laugh,” Barkley told The Athletic, “that’s when you know you’re having a good day.”

CBS and Turner merged in 2011, bringing TNT’s “Inside the NBA” crew into NCAA Tournament coverage, letting Barkley loose on college basketball fans, and Gumbel.

“I’ll never forget at the beginning, I’m not in studio anymore, I was back calling games, so I’m watching from the gym and I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh what is happening?!’” basketball analyst Clark Kellogg, another mainstay in the CBS studio during the NCAA Tournament, recalled while laughing. “When it became a little bit of a circus, the look on Greg’s face, you could tell he was flummoxed — but only if you’d worked with him and knew him. He was so adaptable, he handled it so well.”

Led by Gumbel — and including Johnson and Clark after he moved back to the studio in 2014 — the new group quickly found a rhythm that worked, even if it continued to involve Barkley being Barkley. One particularly memorable on-air moment: Gumbel laughing uncontrollably in response to Barkley’s bizarre story about showering in his uniform.

According to Gumbel’s daughter, Michelle, her dad loved the chaotic pace of March Madness, and the fact that no script could ever keep up with the “non-stop action.” His widow, Marcy, pointed to her husband appreciating basketball’s unpredictability and that every spring, no matter what teams were ranked, if he called their names during Selection Sunday, they would have “a chance to chase their dream.”

But Gumbel was much more than one of college hoops’ most trusted and reassuring voices. Barkley considered him the king of dad jokes. He loved the Rolling Stones with an unmatched passion, attending more than 50 of their concerts. He despised golf. “It’s a stupid game,” he’d tell anyone who would listen. “You walk around and chase a ball — that’s not a sport!” He had a “huge, special laugh,” as CBS Sports president and CEO David Berson liked to describe it, as recognizable to viewers as much as his on-camera authenticity and warmth.

He was a trailblazer and a rare talent. He was also a husband, dad and grandpa.

Suzanne Smith, CBS Sports’ first female director who worked with Gumbel on football broadcasts starting in the early 1990s, put it this way: “Greg was always the coolest guy in the room — and he never knew it.”

Gumbel’s career accomplishments included being the first Black play-by-play announcer to call a major sporting event when he did so at Super Bowl XXXV in 2001. He won three Emmys, anchored three Olympic Games across two networks and led broadcast coverage of everything from the NFL to the NBA. Not that he ever wanted to brag about it.

“He is an iconic pioneer in the space, but he was so uninterested in talking about it that you’d tend to forget it,” Kellogg said. “It was a revelation even for me, especially as a fellow Black man. I had forgotten some of the trailblazing things he’d done. And believe me, he wasn’t going to tell you.”

At CBS, Harold Bryant became the first Black executive producer to oversee sports at any of the major broadcast networks. Bryant studied how Gumbel handled being “the first” himself.

“He didn’t want to be known as the groundbreaker,” Bryant said. “He wanted to let his presence speak for itself, and I took a lot from that.

“He would just say, ‘I want to be known as the best at my craft.’ By always being the best, he showed that anybody can do this job, it’s not limited to one particular type of person. He didn’t talk about wanting to break the mold.”

Barkley said Gumbel’s talent was always clear.

“For as long as he was in the business — and to go from sport to sport, which can’t be easy — you don’t have that type of career until you’re really, really good,” he said.

Despite sitting in the No. 1 chair, Gumbel never wanted the focus on him.

Years ago after calling a Colts game, Smith, Gumbel and the CBS crew wound up at St. Elmo, the Indianapolis steak house famous for its shrimp cocktail. After the group was told the wait was two, maybe three hours, a few people nudged Gumbel and suggested he drop his name. After all, his photo hung on the celebrity wall.

“He wanted no part of it,” Smith said. Afterward, when the crew insisted he take a photo standing by the photo wall, he was mostly mortified, asking his colleagues, “What are we doing? No one cares who I am!”

Throughout sports media there are “certain broadcasters who have that big-time voice,” Smith said. “Greg Gumbel was one of them. If he was calling it, you knew it was an important, special event.”

Despite that acknowledgment from nearly everyone in sports television, Gumbel constantly deferred to his teammates.

“He did love paving the way for others,” said Berson, the CBS Sports president. “That’s a big part of why he was such a good studio host because he was always looking to tee up his colleagues and make them look good.”

Gumbel understood how to deftly transition from one topic and analyst to another, smoothly taking viewers through an entire rundown. Perhaps best of all for everyone working with him, he never appeared rattled; what viewers experienced in their living rooms is the same thing producers experienced in the production truck and on set.

This was the case no matter the situation — a highlight not working, a promo not being read correctly or Barkley needing to be corralled.

“When we go off the rails, Ernie’s used to it,” Barkley said. “We do it probably 20 times a year with him on TNT. But Greg would only see us once a year and he had to react in real time. There’s a talent to that. He never seemed flustered.”

Numerous people who worked with Gumbel spoke about his ability to crack tension on set, though it never came at someone else’s expense.

Kellogg called him “a closet comedian.” Barkley recalled Gumbel told “10 dad jokes a day, and they were just awful. You never knew if you were laughing because it was funny or because they were so nerdy.”

For as much as Gumbel’s work revolved around sports, the stories imprinted on the minds of colleagues, friends and family are about life and conversations beyond the court or field.

Michael Gluc worked as Gumbel’s spotter during NFL games for more than two decades. They traded family stories and holiday cards and checked in with each other throughout the offseason. Gluc still catches himself waiting for Gumbel’s regular Friday email sharing dinner plans for the next day in whatever NFL city they were headed to.

“He loved the Stones, everyone knew that, he saw them in concert multiple times. And for 24 years, I couldn’t tell him I liked the Beatles more,” Gluc confessed, laughing. “I didn’t want to disappoint him.”

At the 1992 Winter Olympics, Gumbel’s first as CBS host, he de-boarded the plane in Albertville, France, and noticed Smith struggling. On crutches after breaking her foot, she couldn’t juggle her luggage. Gumbel, who’d yet to meet Smith, rushed to help.

“There were probably 200 people getting off that plane, and this guy is a superstar at CBS, running over to help someone he doesn’t know,” Smith said.

At the 2011 Final Four in Houston, Berson shared a car with Gumbel to Reliant Stadium. Gumbel asked Berson about his interests outside of sports. They spent the entire ride trading book recommendations after discovering they preferred the same suspense authors like Vince Flynn, Harlan Coben and Sue Grafton (Gumbel also recommended John Sandford and Lee Child).

And yet there is no question that the true highlight of Gumbel’s life came in 2012 when his granddaughter Riley was born. Though Gumbel was an intensely private person — numerous people at CBS did not know he’d been diagnosed with cancer until shortly before his death — one topic he never shied from was Riley.

“The pictures and videos,” Kellogg said, “were unceasing.”

Riley’s favorite memories with her grandpa include dance-offs in the kitchen, telling knock-knock jokes and his insistence that she also get familiar with the Rolling Stones.

“He would always send me his favorite songs that he’d think I’d like, and I ended up loving each one,” Riley wrote in an email to The Athletic. “Whenever I hear one of those songs on the radio, such as ‘Brown Sugar,’ I always think of him and how he is communicating with me from above.”

A few years ago, when Riley was in the fifth grade, her school put together a morning show. When it was Riley’s turn to anchor, her parents recorded it and sent it to Grandpa for feedback.

Her next time in front of the camera, she shined.

“I remembered all the things he had taught me,” she said. “Talk slower, pronounce words with diction and always smile.”

As March Madness tips this week, Gumbel’s absence will be felt. Michelle attended her first and only Final Four with her dad in Houston in 2011, proudly “watching him do what he’s always done best.”

“I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to grow up watching my dad all these years,” Michelle said via email. “I will greatly miss his send-offs after calling the game or hosting, saying goodnight with a heartfelt, ‘Goodbye and so long.’”

(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Kyle Terada / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)