BALTIMORE— Everything, everywhere, everything at the same time.
That's pretty much the job description for CBS announcer Jim Nantz, who will call Super Bowl LVIII from Las Vegas with color analyst Tony Romo by his side.
Even after retiring from his March Madness duties, Nantz still has a hectic schedule that sees NFL games coming straight to the PGA Tour.
“People say, 'Do you like being semi-retired?'” Nantz, 64, said. “I have about 40 weeks of travel left. … It’s not like I’m on some beach.”
He definitely wasn't on the beach the day before the AFC championship game in Baltimore, although millions of viewers probably thought he was. Instead, he was in a cramped trailer beneath M&T Bank Stadium remotely calling the Farmers Insurance Open in La Jolla.
The tournament was adjusted so that the final round was on Saturday, ensuring that it would not compete with the NFL's conference championship games. And CBS made no attempt to hide the fact that Nantz was not on site, referencing several times to the fact that he was in Baltimore.
Still, in the week since then, Nantz has been asked dozens of times how he could have gotten from San Diego to Baltimore so quickly to declare that the Kansas City Chiefs had won.
“It's a lot easier to talk when you're in the arena,” admitted Nantz, who is in his third year calling the Torrey Pines tournament from a remote location. “But we got through it. … I'm looking at all these wonderful shots of the Pacific and the coast and I'm in a trailer in the bowels of a stadium. So it's a little imaginary that you're there watching the paragliders take off and the waves getting bigger.”
All part of the work of a broadcasting icon who will get his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame later this year.
When not working, Nantz splits her time between her homes in Nashville and Pebble Beach, California, while spending as much time as she can with her young son, Jameson, and daughter Finley. She also has an older daughter, Caroline.
Attached to the wall of his office in that Spanish-style house in Pebble Beach is a gray metal box that appears to hide circuit breakers. Inside, however, there is a telephone handset and keypad that used to be in the tunnel at Giants Stadium.
While covering a starting classic between Boston College and Brigham Young, Nantz used that phone in 1985 to return a fateful call from CBS.
Host Jim Nantz shares a special part of his collection of memories dating back to the day CBS hired him.
“I'm on the field before the game, I'm a broadcaster in Utah, and I get a message that I need to call Ted Shaker from CBS,” Nantz said. “I'm looking for a phone. There are no cell phones. Then when you went up the ramp, there was a phone booth on the left side of the wall. I asked if I could enter a credit card number.”
The conversation was:
“Jim, where are you? It looks like there is a band playing.”
“I'm on the field at Giants Stadium.”
“Well, I hope you can hear me. Welcome to CBS.”
It is one of countless memories of a man motivated by his memories.
“He's a very talented guy,” said close friend Tom Brady, a seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback. “An incredible memory, obviously. Incredible narrator. He always knows what to say at the right time.”
Al D'Avanzo was working in the yard of his home in Colts Neck, New Jersey, when he noticed a car driving slowly by. The street, Highfield Lane, is a dead end, so it really caught D'Avanzo's attention when the driver turned around for a second and third pass, eventually parking in front of his house.
Four people got out and one was instantly recognizable.
Hi, friend.
“It was Jim Nantz,” D'Avanzo recalled of the meeting. “He was very surprised. You can't understand it. Why are they you here? He was a pretty good soccer player, but not that good.”
What D'Avanzo didn't know was that his one-story house was the childhood home of a broadcasting legend. The place had changed hands many times since then.
D'Avanzo, retired from his job at the Federal Reserve, is a fan and greeted him warmly once he became aware of the situation. He offered Nantz a tour of the house, including the basement. That brought back a flood of memories.
New England quarterback Tom Brady celebrates with Jim Nantz after leading the Patriots to victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC championship game on January 22, 2017.
(Matt Slocum/Associated Press)
“My dad would come home from work and go right into the construction business,” Nantz said. “He put all the wood paneling on the walls. He built a bar down there. Hard work. He would help him carry his tools.”
The centerpiece of the basement was an old pool table that D'Avanzo planned to discard if he found a way to move it. It turns out that Nantz's father bought that for the family and young Jim spent hours there teaching himself how to play.
D'Avanzo offered to return it to him, and his famous visitor happily accepted. A few days later, the moving services arrived to pick it up. Nantz had the table refelted, but kept the original ornaments in the pockets for nostalgia purposes. There is a special room in his Pebble Beach home where the table will reside.
A boy has to eat, and Nantz gets hungry when he calls games. So he snacks at work during breaks in the action, and he doesn't always do it according to the rules.
“I'm going against all the rules on live television,” he said. “I'm a popcorn fanatic. Crispy stadium popcorn. “I’m eating foods that can get stuck in your throat and I’m putting you in the blue tent for a couple of calls.”
For him, popcorn is his second favorite food, after stone crab, which would be even harder to eat in the air. He has a reservation for a stone crab dinner in Las Vegas the night before the Super Bowl.
Nantz also eats a hot dog at halftime, but he only devours them during the NFL season. He doesn't have time to play with those little ketchup packets so he travels with his own bottle. He bends at the waist when he eats so as not to drip ketchup on his clothes.
According to his calculations, he eats 22 hot dogs per year, which coincides with the number of games he calls, but in reality it is less because he always throws away the last bite.
“It makes me feel like I didn't eat it all,” he said.
The first game in New Orleans Saints history was also Nantz's first game in the NFL. It was September 17, 1967 at Tulane Stadium and Nantz was 8 years old. He and his father didn't have tickets, but they walked around the stadium until they found a reseller offering reasonable prices.
The Saints were playing the Rams and father and son got standing tickets. For the boy, the sights and smells were unforgettable.
“I am reminded of that every time I pass by the entrance of a stadium, when those who are very close leave early and everything is up in the air,” he said. “It's a mix of cigarette smoke and grilled sausages. “I feel transported to my past.”
He and his father were able to find the bulbous end of the bench at the top of the stadium, right in front of the entrance to the old-fashioned wooden press box.
“We were right next to the door,” Nantz said. “She opened up and I looked inside. “I didn’t know that one day I would be on the other side of that door.”
The first play of that Saints opener was a 94-yard kickoff return for a touchdown by New Orleans rookie John Gilliam.
Precisely 50 years later, and by chance, Nantz called a Saints game in New Orleans. Imagine.
Nantz thrives on preparation and inspiration, so it's only fitting that he reach out to one of his broadcasting heroes before calling his first Super Bowl.
Jim Nantz studies a script while covering the PGA's Farmers Insurance Open remotely because he also needed to attend the AFC Championship the next day.
(Sam Farmer / Los Angeles Times)
It was late January 2007 and he was announcing a victory for Tiger Woods in the Buick Open at Torrey Pines. A week later, Nantz would be in Miami for the Super Bowl between Indianapolis and Chicago.
Before making that cross-country trip, Nantz drove from San Diego to Palm Springs, where he had dinner with Jack Whitaker, the veteran CBS broadcaster who called the first Super Bowl. Fellow announcers Ken Venturi and Tom Brookshier were also there, along with his wives.
“I asked Jack, 'What's the one thing I need to keep in mind?'” Nantz said. “He said, 'Jim, you never know what play is going to be the most important play in the game. Just be ready from kick-off.'”
Wise words. The Colts-Bears' first play was a 92-yard kickoff return for a touchdown by Chicago's Devin Hester. It remains the only time in Super Bowl history that someone ran backwards on the game's opening kickoff.
For Nantz, he remembered that opening kickoff of the Saints franchise when he was a kid in the stands.
When Nantz calls the Super Bowl on Sunday, he will have two items in the left breast pocket of his sports jacket. One is his late friend Pat Summerall's gold sobriety coin, a gift from the player-turned-broadcaster's widow. The other is a Whitaker Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame card.
Just as he was inspired by broadcasters who came before him, Nantz has inspired countless legions of future broadcasters and current fans.
Sometimes their lives intersect (and reconnect) with his.
“Hands down, he's my favorite announcer of all time,” said veteran NFL quarterback Philip Rivers. “I just remember when I was a kid, my dad and I were at an NCAA regional and I was 13 or 14 years old. My dad and I were walking outside the arena, and there was a man walking in front of us in a suit and he dropped something. He dropped his call sheet.
“I remember he bent down to pick it up right in front of us and walked away. I remember my dad saying, 'That's Jim Nantz.' And then years later, I'm sitting in production meetings with him as a player. It was incredible”.
Jim Nantz holds the microphone in front of Baltimore linebacker Ray Lewis after the Ravens' Super Bowl XLVII victory over the San Francisco 49ers in February 2013.
(Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
After the Super Bowl, as players celebrate amid a storm of confetti, a massive stage is set up on the field for the trophy presentation. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will be up there, along with the owner, coach, quarterback and other winning players.
Nantz will emcee the festivities with one golden rule in mind: under no circumstances do you hand over the microphone.
“Whoever holds the microphone has the network in their hands,” Nantz said. “There is a CBS television network, and when you lose your microphone…
“That's why they tell you to never let go of that microphone. My greatest athletic achievement might be the fact that I had to wrestle [Hall of Fame linebacker] Ray Lewis in New Orleans during the presentation of the Lombardi Trophy. All with a smile on his face and shaking. He's pulling and I'm backing away.
“I had CBS right there and no one was going to take the network away from me. I had to work very hard and fight, at least to a draw, with the great Ray Lewis.
“They say in case of emergency you can pick up cars and things like that. This was that occasion.
“I've fought for this network more than people realize.”
