Greg Gumbel, Who Called N.F.L. and N.C.A.A. Games, Dies at 78

A dignified presence on camera, most prominently for CBS, he became the first Black announcer to call a major U.S. sports championship, the 2001 Super Bowl.

Greg Gumbel, the affable and low-key sportscaster who for more than five decades was a convivial play-by-play voice and studio host for N.F.L. games, Super Bowls, the Olympics and, most memorably, the madness that descends on college basketball every March, died on Friday at his home in Davie, Fla. He was 78.

His daughter, Michelle Gumbel, said the cause was cancer.

Few announcers have had longer or more accomplished careers in sports broadcasting than Mr. Gumbel.

He did play-by-play for N.F.L. games; he was the studio host for CBS’s groundbreaking pregame show “The NFL Today”; and he became the first Black announcer to call a major sports championship in the United States — the 2001 Super Bowl between the Baltimore Ravens and the New York Giants.

He also anchored ESPN’s “SportsCenter” and called Major League Baseball and N.B.A. games. But it was with N.C.A.A. men’s basketball, as the studio host of CBS’s “March Madness” coverage for 25 years, that Mr. Gumbel achieved his greatest and most lasting fame.

This past March, citing family health issues, Mr. Gumbel missed the tournament. His absence from the fanatically watched show on which he annually announced the seeds and brackets was noted somberly by his longtime co-hosts.

“It’s somewhat surreal that he’s not to my right,” the former pro basketball player Clark Kellogg said. Seth Davis, the longtime college basketball reporter, added: “He’s one of my best friends in the world. He’s watching and he’s thinking, ‘Stop talking about me and read the teams.’”

On every stage, Mr. Gumbel maintained a quiet and dignified presence in front of the camera, with the gravitas of a Walter Cronkite. He never made himself the star, he avoided wild hyperbole, and he described what he saw with an understated exuberance, always choosing less over more.

“Too many broadcasters talk incessantly,” Mr. Gumbel told The Chicago Tribune in 2001. “I’ve seen announcers get in the way. I say I’m here to tell you what you need to know. But I’m not going to beat my chest.”

Jim Nantz, his longtime colleague at CBS Sports, said in an interview that Mr. Gumbel was “your classic anchor — dependable, trustworthy, unflappable.”

Mr. Gumbel, it turns out, wasn’t any different in person from how he was on the air.

“He spent his career being the Greg Gumbel that you would meet on the street,” Mr. Nantz said. “You just happen to have had him in your living room as a friend for over four decades.”

After doing mostly play-by-play work, Mr. Gumbel got his big break at CBS in 1990, when the network chose him to replace Brent Musburger, a towering figure in sports broadcasting, as the host of “The NFL Today,” the highly lucrative jewel of its football programming.

Ted Shaker, then the executive producer of CBS Sports, thought Mr. Gumbel’s cool demeanor would help him overcome the pressure of replacing Mr. Musburger.

“I feel a certain comfort level when I watch him work,” Mr. Shaker told Sports Illustrated. “He gives me information without asserting himself unnecessarily.”

For Mr. Gumbel’s co-host, CBS hired Terry Bradshaw, the former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback, whose untamed, folksy personality probably made him better suited for calling rodeos. But the occasionally frantic ex-jock and the gentlemanly straight man had instant chemistry.

In his book “You Are Looking Live!: How ‘The NFL Today’ Revolutionized Sports Broadcasting” (2021), the sportswriter Rich Podolsky recalled the time that Mr. Gumbel and Mr. Bradshaw needled each other during an interview about the success of the show.

“I can honestly say that Greg is one of my five best friends,” Mr. Bradshaw said, to which Mr. Gumbel replied, “And Terry is one of my 10 best.”

Gregory Girard Gumbel was born on May 3, 1946, in New Orleans to Richard Gumbel Jr. and Rhea (LeCesne) Gumbel. His father was a judge. He grew up in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.

Greg and his younger brother, Bryant — who later became a sportscaster himself and a host of NBC’s “Today” — were big baseball fans growing up.

“Bryant hated the White Sox, and I hated the Cubs,” Mr. Gumbel told Sports Illustrated, “but we loved baseball so much it didn’t matter.”

He played right field for Loras College, a Roman Catholic liberal arts school in Dubuque, Iowa, and graduated in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in English.

Mr. Gumbel worked in advertising for a clothing store in Chicago before becoming a salesman of medical supplies, including bedpans.

By then, Bryant Gumbel was working as a sportscaster at KNBC-TV in Los Angeles, and in 1972 he got a tip that WMAQ-TV, an NBC affiliate in Chicago, was looking for a weekend sportscaster. Bryant asked his brother if he was interested.

“Let me think about this: baseball or bedpans?” he recalled saying in an interview for Mr. Podolsky’s book. “Let’s see.”

Mr. Gumbel auditioned. Three weeks later, he got the job. He was stunned.

“There are a number of reasons why people survive, and some of it is good fortune, and I feel like I’ve had a fair amount of good fortune,” he told Mr. Podolsky. “I feel very fortunate that they stuck with me until I figured out what it was all about.”

In 1981, Mr. Gumbel joined ESPN, where he anchored “SportsCenter” and assisted with N.B.A. coverage. He later served as studio host for pregame and postgame coverage of New York Yankees games. His least favorite job (other than selling bedpans), he said, was hosting a sports talk show on the New York radio station WFAN.

“I didn’t like talk radio,” he once said. “I don’t like people yelling at me.”

He joined CBS Sports in 1989. In addition to his football and basketball duties, he was an anchor for coverage of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, and the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.

Mr. Gumbel married Marcy Kaszynski in 1976. In addition to their daughter, she survives him, as do a granddaughter; his brother, Bryant; and a sister, Rhonda Gumbel-Thomas. Another sister, Renee Gumbel, died in 2019.

Mr. Gumbel called a second Super Bowl in 2004 — the one marred by Janet Jackson’s so-called wardrobe malfunction during the halftime show.

As usual, he kept his cool and guided viewers back to the game.

“I think if you put Greg in a studio from Mars for the first broadcast from Mars, he would make it look like it’s easy broadcasting from Mars,” Mr. Nantz said. “He was such a gifted communicator. He was born to do this work.”

Hank Sanders and Richard Sandomir contributed reporting. Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.