Brent Musburger
One of the most prominent personalities in the history of sports television, Musburger called countless big events during a 15-year stay at CBS that started in 1975 and throughout his career at ABC/ESPN from 1990 to Jan. 31, 2017.
Musburger worked play-by-play on NFL games and hosted the groundbreaking studio show “The NFL Today” at CBS, where he also called the NCAA Final Four, the NBA, the Masters, U.S. Open tennis, boxing, horse racing and Major League Baseball.
He was the voice of college football, including seven BCS national championships, for ABC/ESPN and the SEC Network and hosted the Super Bowl XXV pregame and halftime shows. He also called NBA and college basketball games, golf, NASCAR and soccer.
He is a member of the National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame and the Montana Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame, and he received the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award in Sports Broadcasting in 2016.
He was a sports columnist for the Chicago American before becoming sports director at WBBM-TV in Chicago in 1968, the start of a 22-year association with CBS. In the early 1970s, he moved to KNXT-TV in Los Angeles and served as the co-anchor of the evening news while becoming a larger part of CBS Sports. Musburger and his wife, Arlene, have two sons, Blake and Scott.
Brent talks Vegas …
“I love Las Vegas, and living there is going to be fun. I enjoy talking to people.
“To be able to talk about the NFL and NBA and March Madness in particular, it will be great taking a little bit of a different kind of view of the games with the bookmakers and my friends in the desert.
“Sports betting is a growing business. It’s being accepted more and more by American society. It has come out of the dark alleys. I know it has played a huge role in the growth of the National Football League through the years. The NFL sometimes doesn’t like to acknowledge that, but that’s the truth.
“I think we can deliver a lot of good information to help bettors win. I understand the integrity of the games. That’s so important to the industry and the people who run it.
“The first time I went to Las Vegas was in the early 1960s. The first big show I ever saw was Liberace, and I loved it. It was one of the most entertaining shows I’ve seen to this day.
“Jerry Tarkanian, the late UNLV basketball coach, was a great friend. My last broadcast for CBS was in 1990, and Vegas ran all over Duke in the NCAA championship game.
“The arenas and the big games, no question I’m going to miss that. But this is challenging. We’re building something at VSiN from ground zero, and we’ll see what we can do. It’s an adventure, and I’m looking forward to it.”
