Randy Smith
Sports broadcasting icon Brent Musberger is hanging up his headset and leaving the air after fifty years. It's a bit odd that he's doing it in the middle of the college basketball season, but as of January 31st he will no longer be broadcasting on ABC/ESPN. We will no longer hear his trademark, " You are looking live......."
Musberger intends to join other members of his family in a new business venture in Las Vegas which apparently begins right away. I will miss his professionalism, and his flair for the dramatic.
In my time on this earth, Brent Musberger is the best all around sports broadcaster ever. His work in the studio brought him to prominence as host of "The NFL Today" on CBS. When football season was over, he went to the courts to do basketball play-by-play; first for the NBA, then later the NCAA. His calls of some of the NBA Championship games as well as NCAA Tournament finals will be forever remembered, but perhaps his most famous call was of Doug Fluties' Hail Mary" TD pass at the end of the game leading Boston College to a win over Miami. Since 1990, he has spent his time on the air at ABC and ESPN.
Brent has already been enshrined in the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame and last year was handed the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award. I once met Brent while we were covering the NCAA Tournament; me for WDEF-TV and Brent for CBS. Working for a CBS affiliate if you worked for WDEF you got a chance to see these guys work up close and personal. It was just a passing hand shake and a few sentences but Brent was polite and cordial; not only to me but everyone else who was trying to see him.
A lot of people didn't like Brent Musberger on the air, especially in later years. I would imagine it was the same way they disliked Verne Lundquest who also retired last year at CBS. When announcers begin to slip just a little bit, fans begin to pick up on that and become critical. Some announcers get out before they begin to noticeably slip. John Ward was one and I was another; not that I ever belonged in the same sentence with these guys, but when you begin to struggle with remembering names and can't see the field as well as you used to, it's time to step aside and let a much younger person have the job. Believe it or not, I don't feel Brent Musberger has slipped that much at all. I would like to think he went out on top.
In his final "sign off" on ESPN on Tuesday night, Brent said goodbye to his fans and invited them to come and see him in Las Vegas. He invited them to join him for a "cold one" and to sit and talk about some of the great games they had seen. Brent, enjoy your retirement, and good luck on your new business venture. I just might take you up on your offer one day.
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Randy Smith has been covering sports on radio, television and print for the past 45 years. After leaving WRCB-TV in 2009, he has written two books, and has continued to free-lance as a play-by-play announcer. His career has included a 17-year stretch as host of the Kickoff Call In Show on the University of Tennessee’s prestigious Vol Network. He has been a member of the Vol Network staff for 30 years. He has done play-by-play on ESPN, ESPN II, CSS, and Fox SportSouth, totaling more than 500 games, and served as a well-known sports anchor on Chattanooga Television for more than a quarter-century. In 2003, he became the first television broadcaster to be inducted into the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame. Randy and his wife Shelia reside in Hixson. They have two married children, (Christi and Chris Perry; Davey and Alison Smith.) They have five grandchildren, Coleman, Boone, Mattingly, DellaMae, and CoraLee.