Sports
Remembering Greg Gumbel: Viewers relied on him from Selection Sunday to ‘One Shining Moment’
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.
Greg Gumbel was a private man, but his love of the Rolling Stones and his granddaughter, Riley, were no secret. (Courtesy of the Gumbel family)
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)
Sports
Law firm fighting for women’s sports in SCOTUS battle comments on ruling possibly impacting SJSU trans lawsuit
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A law firm leading the charge in the ongoing Supreme Court case over trans athletes in women’s sports has responded after a federal judge suggested the case’s ruling could impact a separate case involving a similar issue.
Colorado District Judge Kato Crews deferred ruling in motions to dismiss former San Jose State volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser’s lawsuit against the California State University (CSU) system until after a ruling in the B.P.J. v. West Virginia Supreme Court case, which is expected to come in June.
Slusser filed the lawsuit against representatives of her school and the Mountain West Conference in fall 2024 after she allegedly was made to share bedrooms and changing spaces with trans teammate Blaire Fleming for a whole season without being informed that Fleming is a biological male.
Meanwhile, the B.P.J. case went to the Supreme Court after a trans teen sued West Virginia to block the state’s law that prevents males from competing in girls’ high school sports.
The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is the primary law firm defending West Virginia in that case at the Supreme Court, and has now responded to news that Slusser’s lawsuit could be affected by the SCOTUS ruling.
“We hope the ruling from the Supreme Court will affirm that Title IX was designed to guarantee equal opportunity for women, not to let male athletes displace women and girl in competition. It is crucial that sports be separated by sex for not only the equal opportunity of women but for safety and privacy. Title IX should protect women’s right to compete in their own sports. Allowing men to compete in the female category reverses 50 years of advancement for women,” ADF Vice President of Litigation Strategies Jonathan Scruggs said.
Slusser’s attorney, Bill Bock of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, expects a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the legal defense representing West Virginia, thus helping his case.
(Left) Brooke Slusser (10) of the San Jose State Spartans serves the ball during the first set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on Oct. 19, 2024. (Right) Blaire Fleming #3 of the San Jose State Spartans looks on during the third set against the Air Force Falcons at Falcon Court at East Gym on October 19, 2024 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. ( Andrew Wevers/Getty Images; Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
“We’re looking forward to the case going forward,” Bock told Fox News Digital.
“I believe that the court is going to find that Title IX operates on the basis of biological sex, without regard to an assumed or professed gender, and so just like the congress and the members of congress that passed Title IX in 1972, allowed this specifically provided for in the regulations that there had to be separate men’s and women’s teams based on biological sex, I think the court is going to see that is the original meaning of the statute and apply it in that way, and I think it’s going to be a big win in women’s sports.”
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared prepared to rule in favor of West Virginia after oral arguments on Jan. 13.
Slusser spoke on the steps of the Supreme Court on Jan. 13 while oral arguments took place inside, sharing her experience with a divided crowd of opposing protesters.
With Fleming on its roster, SJSU reached the 2024 conference final by virtue of a forfeit by Boise State in the semifinal round. SJSU lost in the final to Colorado State.
Slusser went on to develop an eating disorder due to the anxiety and trauma from the scandal and dropped out of her classes the following semester. The eating disorder became so severe, that Slusser said she lost her menstrual cycle for nine months. Her decision to drop her classes resulted in the loss of her scholarship, and her parents said they had to foot the bill out of pocket for an unfinished final semester of college.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Education determined in January that SJSU violated Title IX in its handling of the situation involving Fleming, and has given the university an ultimatum to agree to a series of resolutions or face a referral to the Department of Justice.
Among the department’s findings, it determined that a female athlete discovered that the trans student allegedly conspired to have a member of an opposing team spike her in the face during a match. ED claims that “SJSU did not investigate the conspiracy, but later subjected the female athlete to a Title IX complaint for ‘misgendering’ the male athlete in online videos and interviews.”
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SJSU trans player Blaire Fleming and teammate Brooke Slusser went to a magic show and had Thanksgiving together in Las Vegas despite an ongoing lawsuit over Fleming being transgender. (Thien-An Truong/San Jose State Athletics)
SJSU Athletic Director Jeff Konya told Fox News Digital in a July interview that he was satisfied with how the university handled the situation involving Fleming.
“I think everybody acted in the best possible way they could, given the circumstances,” Konya said.
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Sports
Myles Garrett cited for speeding a ninth time, an elite pass rusher seemingly always in a rush
Myles Garrett is in a hurry to become the greatest pass rusher in NFL history. The Cleveland Browns All-Pro defensive end set the single-season sack record in 2025 and has cracked the top 20 career leaders after only nine seasons.
“I’m going to take that down, and I prefer I take it down in the next five years,” Garrett told Casino Guru News last month.
Off the field, however, his urgency to get from point A to B is a problem. He’s accumulating speeding tickets at an alarming rate.
On Feb. 21, Garrett was handed his ninth speeding ticket since his NFL career began in 2017. He was cited for driving 94 mph in a 70-mph zone on Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio.
The citation from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office says Garrett was driving his green 2024 Porsche at 1:35 a.m., returning home after attending a Miami of Ohio basketball game in Oxford.
Body cam footage shows the officer telling Garrett that she kept the charge under 100 mph so that a court appearance wouldn’t be mandatory. Garrett reportedly still holds a Texas driver’s license — he attended Texas A&M — and told the officer that he did not have an Ohio license.
Cleveland Browns’ Myles Garrett wears a jacket displaying his girlfriend Chloe Kim before the women’s snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy.
(Lindsey Wasson / AP)
The officer wrote that the famously affable Garrett was “kind and cooperative,” and that drugs and alcohol were not a factor.
Garrett’s need for speed flies in the face of his persona. He has written poetry since high school, peppers social media with inspirational sayings and donates time and money to several charities.
His girlfriend is two-time gold-medal-winning U.S. Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim, for whom he wrote a poem he shared on social media: “You enrapture fools to kings, and exist without a peer, put on this Earth for many things, but our love is why you’re here.”
Verse hasn’t slowed his roll. On Aug. 9 he was cited for ticket No. 8, clocked at 100 mph in a 60-mph zone in a Cleveland suburb a day after the Browns returned home from a preseason game at Carolina.
Garrett’s seventh ticket followed a frightening crash in 2022. He flipped his gray 2021 Porsche 911 Turbo S off State Road in Sharon Township and he and a female passenger were injured. He was cited for failing to control his vehicle due to unsafe speeds on what had been a slick roadway.
A witness told a responding police officer that Garrett’s vehicle went airborne, took out a fire hydrant and rolled three times. Garrett sustained shoulder and biceps sprains and was sidelined for the Browns’ game that week against the Atlanta Falcons. His companion was not seriously injured.
Cleveland television station WKYC reported that in September 2021 Garrett was stopped twice in a 24-hour period — for driving 120 and 105 mph. The infractions occurred on Interstate 71 in Medina County, where the speed limit is 70 mph, and he paid fines of $267 and $287.
A year earlier, Garrett was cited for driving 100 mph in a 65-mph zone of Interstate 77 — again while driving a Porsche — and paid a $308 fine. He accumulated his first batch of speeding tickets in 2017 and 2018, and the police reports recite similar circumstances: Garrett driving well over the speed limit, cited without incident, paid a nominal fine.
The piddly fines certainly aren’t a deterrent. Garrett, 30, and the Browns agreed to a four-year contract extension in March 2025 that made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history at the time. The deal pays the seven-time All-Pro more than $40 million a season and includes more than $123 million in guaranteed money.
He set the NFL single-season sack record with 23.0 last season, surpassing the 22.5 accumulated by T.J. Watt and Michael Strahan. Garrett has 125.5 career sacks, averaging 14 a season, a pace that would enable him to break Bruce Smith’s career record of 200 in five years.
“That is definitely on my mind to go out there and get,” Garrett said. “That’s a goal I’ve had for years now since college.”
Garrett has declined to discuss his driving habits.
“I’d honestly prefer to talk about football and this team than anything I’m doing off the field other than the back-to-school event that I did the other day,” he told reporters after ticket No. 8 in August, referring to a charity appearance.
“I try to keep my personal life personal. And I’d rather focus on this team when I can.”
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Former ESPN broadcaster Keith Olbermann once again incited backlash on social media Wednesday after he called late legendary college football coach Lou Holtz a “legendary scumbag” in an X post on the day Holtz was announced dead.
“Legendary scumbag, yes,” Olbermann wrote in response to a clip of Holtz criticizing former President Joe Biden in 2020 for supporting abortion rights.
Olbermann received scathing criticism in response to his post on X.
“You’re a scumbag that needs mental help,” one X user wrote to Olbermann.
One user echoed that sentiment, writing to Olbermann, “You’re the real scumbag here. Lou Holtz had more class, integrity, and genuine decency in his pinky finger than you’ll ever show in your lifetime.”
Another user wrote, “You’re a grumpy, lonely, Godless man. All the things Lou Holtz was not.”
Keith Olbermann speaks onstage during the Olbermann panel at the ESPN portion of the 2013 Summer Television Critics Association tour at the Beverly Hilton Hotel July 24, 2013, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Olbermann has made it a pattern of sharing politically charged far-left statements that are often combative and ridiculed on social media, typically resulting in immense backlash.
After the U.S. men’s hockey team’s gold medal win, Olbermann heavily criticized the team for accepting an invitation from President Trump to the State of the Union address. Olbermann wrote on X that any members of the men’s team who attended the event were “declaring their indelible stupidity and misogyny,” while praising the women’s team for declining the invitation.
In January, Olbermann attacked former University of Kentucky women’s swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler for celebrating a women’s rights rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments for two cases focused on the legality of biological male trans athletes in women’s sports.
Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz listens before being presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in Washington, D.C., Dec, 3, 2020. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“It’s still about you trying to find an excuse for a lifetime wasted trying to succeed in sports without talent,” Olbermann wrote in response to Wheeler’s post.
In 2025, Olbermann faced significant backlash after posting (and later deleting) a message on X aimed at CNN contributor Scott Jennings, that said, “You’re next motherf—–,” shortly after the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.
Holtz was a stern supporter of President Donald Trump, even saying in February 2024 that Trump needed to “coach America back to greatness!”
Near the end of Trump’s first term, shortly after former President Joe Biden defeated him in the 2020 election, Trump awarded Holtz with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States.
After Holtz’s death was announced Wednesday, several top GOP figures paid tribute to the coach on social media.
Those GOP lawmakers included senators Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.; Todd Young, R-Ind.; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; representatives Greg Murphy, R-N.C.; David Rouzer, R-N.C.; Erin Houchin, R-Ind.; and Steve Womack, R-Ark.; and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; Indiana Gov. Mike Braun; U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon; and Rudy Giuliani.
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Lou Holtz, former Notre Dame football coach, addresses the America First Policy Institute’s America First Agenda Summit at the Marriott Marquis July 26, 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)
At the time of publication, prominent Democrat leaders have appeared silent on Holtz’s passing, including prominent Democrats with a football background.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who worked as an assistant high school football coach; Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who was a recruiting target for Holtz in 1986 as a college prospect; Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, who played in the NFL; and Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Ill., who played football for the University of Illinois, have not posted acknowledging Holtz’s death.
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