One of the biggest names in the history of sports broadcasting is calling it a career.
ESPN announced Wednesday that Brent Musburger will retire from broadcasting as of Tuesday, ending a 44-year national career that started with CBS in 1973. Musburger has been with ESPN/ABC since his abrupt firing from CBS in 1990 and most recently had been the lead play-by-play voice for ESPN’s SEC Network.
It is hard to say exactly what Musburger was best known for, as there are so many candidates. It could be his work as host of The NFL Today from 1975-89, his more recent role as the voice of college football on ESPN from 2006-14, his time as the lead voice of college basketball on CBS in the 1980s, or even his work as an NBA play-by-play and studio voice during the league’s 1970s doldrums and 1980’s revival. He could have been known for his baseball work as well, but was fired from CBS before he could begin his role as the network’s lead MLB announcer.
In one capacity or another, Musburger worked nine Super Bowl broadcasts for CBS and ABC, the BCS national championship ten times across ABC, ESPN and ESPN Radio, the NCAA Final Four nine times for CBS and a whopping 23 NBA Finals for CBS and ESPN Radio.
Musburger also worked a wide variety of events beyond the NFL, college football and NBA, including Major League and Little League baseball, golf, tennis, college basketball, horse racing, and both NASCAR and the Indy 500.
Musburger’s career included its fair share of controversy, from his comments on Tommie Smith and John Carlos as a newspaper reporter in the 1960s (“dark-skinned stormtroopers,” back when stormtroopers referred to World War rather than Star Wars) to more recent tumult on his last college football broadcast, the Sugar Bowl earlier this month.
ESPN strained on social media Wednesday to tamp down on speculation that Musburger, who signed a multi-year contract extension less than a year ago, was forced out due to his Sugar Bowl comments, in which he gave well-wishes to an Oklahoma football player who had been arrested for assault. On the company’s corporate blog, ESPN executive Stephanie Druley said the network was not aware of Musburger’s decision until ten days before the Sugar Bowl. She said ESPN tried to get Musburger to change his mind, making a “very strong pitch” in a follow-up meeting.
Musburger’s final game will be Tuesday’s Georgia/Kentucky college basketball matchup for ESPN. Before that, he will call Florida/Oklahoma this Saturday.
