About Greg Gumbel
Gregory Girard Gumbel (May 3, 1946 – December 27, 2024) was an American television sportscaster. He was best known for his various assignments for CBS Sports (most notably, the National Football League and NCAA basketball). Gumbel became the first African-American announcer to call play-by-play of a major sports championship in the United States when he announced Super Bowl XXXV for the CBS network in 2001. From 1998 through 2023, Gumbel was the studio host for CBS' men's college basketball coverage and was a play-by-play broadcaster for the NFL on CBS. == Biography == === Early years === Gregory Girard Gumbel was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1946, the first child of Rhea Alice (LeCesne) and Richard Dunbar Gumbel, a judge. His paternal great-great-grandfather was a German-Jewish emigrant from the village of Albisheim. As a young man, Gumbel grew up on Chicago's South Side, where he was raised Catholic, attending and graduating from De La Salle Institute. In 1967, Gumbel graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English from Loras College, where he also played on the baseball team. Gumbel had two sisters, Renee Gumbel-Farrahi and Rhonda Gumbel-Thomas, and a younger brother, Bryant Gumbel, who also pursued a network television broadcasting career. === Career === In 1973, Gumbel's brother, Bryant, then working as a television sportscaster at KNBC in Los Angeles, informed him that another NBC owned-and-operated station, WMAQ-TV in Chicago, was auditioning for a sports announcer. At the time, Gumbel was selling hospital supplies in Detroit.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.