Bryant Gumbel and Greg Gumbel both work NFL games on television, for the NFL Network and CBS respectively. There are no articles about Greg Gumbel’s performance, and he has not attracted any national attention. In fact, most sports fans don’t even notice Greg Gumbel’s presence on NFL and college basketball telecasts.
Bryant, on the other hand has countless articles critiquing his performance, and none of them are complimentary. From the time he was hired, he was big news, first for his scathing comments about NFL Union head Gene Upshaw. When he began his job as play-by-play broadcaster for Thursday and Saturday night NFL games, the attention shifted to his lackluster calls and seeming disinterest with anything going on. Neil Best, Newsday:
“Gumbel seemed barely awake at times during the network’s eighth and final night game.
Forget for a moment his tin ear for football jargon – troubling for a network dedicated to the sport – that found him thrice saying a team had turned over the ball on downs when it was about to punt.
His worst trait is being understated to the point of missing the story and drama.”
Richard Sandomir, New York Times:
Not knowing the ins and outs of the game you’re calling is usually cause for firing. With personalities of certain status, however, it can be overlooked. Al Michaels, for instance, was horrible in his two year stint as an NBA broadcaster for ABC. While he did a good job on some calls (for instance, the Derek Fisher 0.4 game winning in 2004), he was generally disinterested with and uninformed about the game of basketball. The only reason Michaels was removed from NBA duty was because of his weaseling out of his ABC/ESPN contract to go to NBC.
Gumbel might be able to serve out the rest of his four year deal with NFL Network because of a need to save face. NFL Network took a huge risk in making him their play-by-play announcer, and he has enough of an ego to want to make sure he sticks it out. But the fact is that he has already failed; any time you can be distracted by the person calling the game, it’s usually a bad thing. Any time people write articles about your performance, it’s usually a horrible thing. In fact, the only broadcaster who has had worse reviews than Gumbel might be Tony Kornheiser on Monday Night Football.
One could say that Bryant Gumbel could try to be more like Greg, but it would be a mistake to imagine that he could suddenly develop talent for something he clearly isn’t good at. The better option would be to shift him to the studio, where he could replace Rich Eisen and mumble curse words about guests after interviews.
