I made Jim Nantz late for dinner. The famed broadcaster had spent the Friday before the New England Patriots/Baltimore Ravens game meeting with players and coaches in preparation for Sunday’s contest on CBS. Now, friends were anxiously waiting for him in the lobby. But Nantz had promised a 10-minute phone interview to Coaches Aid, that turned into over half an hour. There were just so many questions to ask Nantz, who graciously answered away and offered to continue the chat on Monday. Nantz is known for his class and it came through in the interview.
Coaches Aid caught up with Nantz because the New Jersey native returned home as the 2009 recipient of the Monmouth Award for Communication Excellence (MACE). The 50-year-old is spoke Tuesday at Monmouth University in “An Evening with Jim Nantz.” He grew up in nearby Colts Neck, and captained the Marlboro High School basketball and golf teams.
Sports fans hear Nantz just about every weekend. He is CBS’ lead play-by-play announcer for the NFL and NCAA men’s basketball, and is synonymous with the Masters coverage. His storytelling ability takes you beyond the obvious. Nantz gained crossover fame by twice golfing with President George H.W. Bush and President Clinton, and for co-authoring a New York Times bestseller, Always By My Side, which told of the lessons from his father who was battling Alzheimer’s.
But what about Jim Nantz the athlete? Or Jim Nantz the young broadcaster? In our interview, Nantz spoke of being a golf course rat, a paperboy, recalled a key hoops win over Howell his senior year, dispelled a myth, described his return to an athletic triumphant and why he eventually traded in a 9-iron for a microphone, among other memories of growing up in Central Jersey.
Jim Nantz the athlete
Q: Any secret golf outings with President Bush or President Clinton this trip?
A: (laughs) Nothing recently with both of them together, although I did see former President Bush 41 several times over the summer including at the end of August right up the road in Kennebunkport.
Q: Did you play a little of everything growing up?
A: I played Pop Warner football. I tried to play football at Marlboro but I got injured. My senior year I came out trying to help the program. I was coming out as two-way player trying to play quarterback. Trying to play defensive back. I never made it to a first game because I blew out my knee a couple weeks before the season opener. But I was on the varsity basketball team. I was the captain of the golf team. Yeah, I did a little bit of everything. Played over there in Lincroft for the Colts Neck Little League all-star team. So I was into all sports, but the one that had my attention the most when it came to sports participation was golf.
At first, I played over at Bam Hollow. My parents really joined Bamm Hollow just so I could have access to it. Then by my sophomore year in high school, this wonderful man named Tony Bruno, the head pro over at Battleground at Freehold offered me a job as like a club cleaner, and a cart boy where I would make sure all the golf carts were charged and the golf clubs were cleaned off for the members, and I’d pick up the driving range. You know, at the age of 15 to be able to work in a pro shop around a man you respected and had so much integrity like Tony, it really was an important time in my life.
Q: I read your father played high school football and college football?
A: My father did play college football. And he also played college basketball at Guilford College down in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Q: You retired from football after the 5th grade—the first time. So I guess football wasn’t in your calling?
A: (laughs) I don’t think my frame was quite as thick as my dad’s. My dad was a big, strong strapping guy. And I was more lean body mass. I probably was never going to be the football player my father was. My father was a pretty good football player.
Q: How tall are you?
A: I’m 6-3. I’m the same height as what my dad was. It was good enough size to be able to play a little bit, modestly I might add, to play a little bit of basketball.
Q: How would Jim Nantz the announcer assess Jim Nantz the basketball player and Jim Nantz the golfer?
A: I think he would say in basketball that I was a very determined individual who tried to outwork everyone, but had limited skills in basketball. In golf, again, I was able to manufacture enough of a golf swing by imitation. By watching so much golf on television and imaging that you were one of the premier players of that time. I would always kind of model myself after Tom Weiskopf because he was tall and kind of lean, the whole thing. His body frame was similar to mine. So I tried to play golf. I tried to play it at a high level. I made all-Shore down there in Monmouth County. But when I got to [University of] Houston and made the golf team as a walk-on then I really found out about what true talent is all about. When I was measuring my skill level against the skill level of my teammates, I realized there was a pretty serious gap there.
Q: When you look back on your high school glory days as an athlete, what are some of the memories and things you think about?
A: Well, I was very proud of winning the Freehold Regional High School District championship. It was just a little tournament but it was a district tournament between five schools: Freehold Township, Freehold Boro, Manalapan, Marlboro and Howell Township. And I won that my senior year and then years later I came back and they named the district champion the Jim Nantz award. I guess I won the first one, so that was really special. But I just have a lot of memories of competing. And I love being part of a team. I loved being part of a high school golf team playing for a gentleman named Stan Bryck. He was a very positive minded person. And he gave me a lot of confidence. As a freshman I was playing basically with four other seniors in the starting five. And he made feel like I belonged at that level. I enjoyed the team part of golf, if that makes any sense, which was what really high school golf was about.
My high school basketball team did not have a super record but I can remember beating Howell in the opening game of my senior year. And we had had very slim success my junior year. So to open our senior year with a big win on the road at Howell, that was one of my favorite moments. I can remember how relieved we all were to get that victory under our belts.
Q: Did that just make the season, beating Howell?
A: It had been a really bad season the year before. And to go into someone else’s building and win a game—I can still remember it. If I had to bet on it I’d say the final score was 54-48, but I haven’t really thought about it, since 19 … it was probably like a December game of 1976. So 33 years ago. I’d love to know how close that would be. Maybe it happened back in ’77—but point is it was a long time back. And I can remember that game and I might be pretty close to even having the score correct.
Q: Your book was a lot about relationships more so than sports …
A: Yes it was. Thank you for saying that. It really was a relationships book as opposed to just a sports book.
Q: Is that what you kind of take from your high school sporting memories, the memoires of your friends and playing on a team and the relationships you built there?
A: Oh no question. I would also remember how my father would attend all of my events. Although sometimes he did have to travel but he went out of his way to be on hand for all my competitions when allowable. Writing the book was really the most fulfilling thing of my career. I’m really grateful you viewed it as I viewed it, as a relationship book. If you boxed it into a sports category, it ended up reaching the highest ranking of any sports book in 2008. It was more than I could have ever have dreamt.
Q: From paperboy to author?
A: Paperboy, author with help from a great friend who’s a New Jerseyite as well, my friend Eli Spielman. Yeah, you go from delivering the stories to being able to write one. So that was fun.
Q: Going back to the Freehold tournament, I read you were credited in helping to start it?
A: Well, I think people are being a little generous about that. Coach Bryck, my golf coach, I know he’s given me some credit for kind of hatching the idea. But I think it was really Mr. Bryck’s idea. I think he was always trying to think of ways to promote golf at the high school level and I really give him the credit for that. But hey, I’m just glad we were able to compete in it. We played it over at Howell Park. It was a lot of fun. Actually a couple years ago when I was down at the Shore eating some pizza over at Freducci’s, my favorite hang spot, I got in the car and drove out to Howell because I hadn’t seen it probably in 30 years. And I got out of the car, I wasn’t going to play. And I just walked over and I looked at the 18th green. I believe I ended up winning that thing in a playoff which commenced on the first tee. And I remember going over to the first tee—it was just a couple years ago—and looking down that fairway and just imagining when I was just some 17-year-old kid standing there, probably more nervous then I would admit to at the time, you know playing for a little tournament title. It was just taking a little stroll down memory lane.
Q: What do you make of how big high school sports have gotten? With games being on ESPN, USA Today rankings …
A: I have to say this, as a kid I used to watch these high school games off of channel 11 in New York with Marty Glickman doing these games. And I always thought that was wild. What must it be like for those kids to be on television. I’d watch those games. But I really love the purity of high school sports now. I don’t broadcast any of them at all. But as someone who was actively participating in two and attempted to make it three, I know how much benefit I got from that. From being around coaches. From learning teamwork. From learning the value in the common goal. It definitely helped shape my life. And there are times I wish I could just go back and re-wind the tape and kind of get that experience one more time. What it was like to go after school and suit up for practice and trying to learn how to run a new offense for our basketball team. Those were the things that we were concerned with when you were a kid. What was that like? As time marching on you forget what the feeling was. I know it was a good vibe because I still carry it with me today.
Q: You were covered by the Asbury Park Press or maybe the Red Bank paper, but these kids, or at least the elite ones, are under a bigger microscope. Do you think that’s a good thing for high school sports?
A: Yeah, it seems a lot more serious than it did in my day. That’s for sure. Today it does. Of course, everything else is more sophisticated. Training, scheduling, diet, exercise. It’s all changed. I can remember the first basketball practice of the season. Our coach made us run a mile. We thought that was just insane. It’s like it’s unfair, what was this man thinking? A mile—he’s crazy. Someone ought to sit him down and tell him that’s asking too much. That was back in the ‘70s. And now I run all the time. As a matter of fact I was trying to get out this morning, but I had to be at the Patriots so early. And I left at 6 in the morning, but I’m pretty good for four or five days a week running at least three miles a minimum a day. In high school you didn’t think of it that way. I’m not saying we were fat and out of shape, it’s just that you didn’t realize exactly the approach that people have today. Definitely everything’s changed.
Jim Nantz jokes with his CBS broadcast partner Phil Simms during a NFL telecast (photos courtesy of CBS)
Broadcasting Career
Q: In broadcasting you have to be quick on your feet, you have to be prepared, work as a team. In a way did playing help prepare you for a broadcasting career? A: I think definitely. When I broadcast it’s a concert with a number of musicians bringing their instruments to play. I just happen to be one part of the band. When we broadcast this weekend, for example, from Foxboro they’ll be a good 250 people involved in our show. And the whole orchestration of it is fascinating. And anytime someone gets a window into our world, gets to walk into the production truck and watch how this broadcast comes to life or to put a spare headset on in our booth, I think they’re always astonished that there is so much coordination behind it. And you know, that is very similar to how a football team operates and wins. Sure, you’re a great quarterback, but if you were the only player on the field you’re not going to be able to win. It has to be carefully crafted and orchestrated, and that’s what we do at CBS. I’ve been lucky enough to have some wonderful friendships develop here. People are like family to me, I get to work with on an every week basis.
Q: When you mention the booth, in your book you said as a kid in your Colts Neck home, you would pretend to have a broadcasting center.
A: By that, I wasn’t simulating like broadcasting as I was running up into my attic and shifting the antennae around so if I didn’t like the games that were being brought into my home from the New York market, I would just shift the antennae around up in the attic down to Philadelphia because they may be getting a different set of NFL games, for example. So I was kind of my own studio technician. My own, as I called it my one boy studio. But just again, I had to see everything. I had to know what was going on. That’s kind of the way, like when I’m calling a game on weekends, I have to know what’s going on at every other NFL site. When it’s not impeding on my broadcast in commercials, I’m scanning NFL.com, checking all the game centers, seeing who’s rushing for yardage, who’s having a hot day. It’s exactly like it was when I was a little kid in my home on Highfield Lane in Colts Neck. It’s the same kind of idea, if you will. Except it’s far more sophisticated now.
Q: Did you grow up wanting to be a pro broadcaster?
A: I did. I wanted to be a storyteller. It had nothing to do with being on television. It had everything with wanting to be someone taking sports as the focus and being able to tell the story of sport, with as much erudition as possible. Just like those legendary iconic voices of my youth.
Q: So when you were a kid you would rather be a Jim McKay than a Willis Reed or someone like that?
A: Oh no question. No question. Even to this day I wouldn’t trade what I do for a living for anything. This is exactly what I dreamt of as a little boy, right down to the network. So I wouldn’t trade with anyone. I spent the afternoon here today meeting with the Patriots, Tom Brady came in. He’s a good friend. I’m just going to use him as an example. He’s got a big life. He’s a Super Bowl star quarterback, Super Bowl MVP. Married to a beautiful woman. He’s on top of the world and I’m very happy for him. But I wouldn’t trade what I’m doing because this is what I wanted to do since I was a little boy. I wouldn’t trade it with anyone. I wouldn’t trade it even with Tom Brady.
The book: Always By My Side
Q: You said your book was cathartic was dealing with your father’s illness?
A: No question. It was tantamount to bringing him back to life again. He was stricken in ’95 with a stroke. He slowly began to fade from reality, from the world as he knew it into the dark abyss of Alzheimers. It was as though my father was alive but he wasn’t when he was suffering through all those years. Thirteen years total until the end. But when I sat down to write the book in my head all the wonderful memories came back to life. And every day I was trying to advance the ball down the field a little bit in concert with Eli, my co-author. And I realized, gosh, I had such a great set of parents. I always knew that. That was not lost on me. But to write about them every day really in a lot of ways brought them back to life in my mind. Of course, the book came out in May of ’08. It was an instant New York Times bestseller which in which I never anticipated. But seven, eight weeks after the book came out. My father did in fact succumb to Alzheimers. And it was like I lost him for a second time. And that was very hard for me to deal with.
Q: What has the aftermath been like, going around talking to several places and hearing people’s reaction to it?
A: You know what it’s like? It’s a beautiful gift that keeps on giving. Every game I go to, someone finds a way to get that book up to the broadcast booth. Sometime there’s more than a handful of people, but every week, without fail I’m signing that book for someone. Of course they always come up very timidly and ask if I would mind signing the book. And little do they know that they are giving me a wonderful moment when they do that. Not only of course am I going to sign their book, but I am going to thank for again, reminding me of my father at that very moment of time.
Q: So you’re happy to sign it.
A: I’m thrilled to sign it. And it’s just like I feel my father’s presence every time someone asks me to sign the book. It’s beautiful. It’s just a beautiful gift for me.
Q: Do people ever tell you stories of their own family?
A: I got hundreds, if not thousands of correspondences about that book. I’ve had several already today just being around the new England headquarters. Because I did not have a game here, believe it or not, I did not have a Patriots game in ’08 once Brady blew out his name. So I didn’t deal with this team at all in ’08. But I’ve run into people from that organization who came over and thanked me and regretted they didn’t bring the book today to the stadium. They wanted me to sign. It’s just a reminder that, thankfully, it happens frequently and every time it brings great joy to my soul.
Growing Up
Q: You’re coming back to Monmouth County …
A: I am. I’m tickled to death. I have a lot of strong ties to that area. I lived in Colts Neck all through my growing up years if you will. You know, graduate of Marlboro High School and paperboy for the Asbury Park Press, which I think is one of the sponsors of the evening down at Monmouth.
Q: Talk about full circle, from paperboy to being sponsored by them.
A: (laughs) I know, it’s all a little surreal, believe me. I’m very blessed to be able to have people make any kind of fuss over me. I still can’t quite get used to it. But, I’m very honored to have a night like that down at Monmouth University.
Q: Is this the first time you’ve been back in a while to Monmouth?
A: Oh no, I go back many times. I got friends who live in that area. I’m no stranger to those parts. But I haven’t gone back there for an event like this. I feel very unworthy, but it’s going to be something that with great pride I’ll stand there before a lot of old friends and new friends and have a chance to talk about this industry that has been so good to me.
Q: What are some of your memories growing up in Colts Neck and being introduced to sports at that pivotal age? A: Well, I was always a sports fanatic. I’m going to sound like a real relic here, but in my day we didn’t have ESPN. We didn’t the Internet. We didn’t have access to sports television 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We didn’t even have VCRs, much less DVRs. So the idea that you could follow sports—you had to be kind of enterprising and creative. I did the best I could to find the proper information flow to take care of my insatiable appetite for knowledge of all things sports related. So that’s why I had a little mini-paper route if you will, not only with the Asbury Park Press, but the Red Bank Register. So I had those two papers but it added up to a grand total to about 11 papers on my route. It was spread out there I must say about a mile in a half. So it was a good healthy walk in the afternoons as a young kid with a little paper bag slung over his shoulder. I’d fold my papers, and these were afternoon papers at the time, then I’d come home and just absolutely absorb every inch of the sports pages. And that’s the reason I had that paper route. I look back on it now and you know, where has the time gone? And to think I get to go back to Monmouth University after having now almost a 25-year career at CBS, I feel really blessed.
Q: Were you the kind of paperboy that would pretend you were a quarterback throwing the newspaper?
A: No, not quite. I mean mine was more like walking through someone’s front yard and taking it up to the front door stoop and very carefully placing it there so no one had to go too far. I wasn’t tossing it wildly so it ended up behind the hedges or anything like that. All the while, by the way, while I was out there walking around delivering these papers, I had my little transistor radio and I was already hooked on information. By the way, of course there was no WFAN at that time. We’re talking back in the early ‘70s. I would be walking around listening to news talk radio. Guys like Bob Grant filling my head with all kinds of strong opinions and ideas about the world.
Q: Do you think not having the quick information like ESPN or YouTube helped in your storytelling ability?
A: I think that what really helped me in my ability to tell stories, if I have any ability at all, is just that I was a very good listener. And I listen with great concentration to people that could really weave a great story. Whether it was those on television who caught my attention—the Jim McKays, the Jack Whitakers, Chris Schenkel, Curt Gowdy, Pat Summerall, Dick Enberg—those men who took me to places all around the world on the weekends. I watched them tell these stories about all people, places and things and counties and cultures. It was just like a travelogue every week and a way to open up my mind. And even if you take people like this wonderful, great man, the late Sam LaPenta, who was a minster over at the Colts Neck Reformed Church who could deliver a sermon with the best of all storytellers. You know, this riveting, just a strong beginning, middle and an end, and a payoff to his homilies. I would just be riveted by how people could really tell a story. And that’s what I always wanted to do.
Q: So you really soaked everything up you could?
A: I was really driven since I was 11 years old, is the timeline I’ve been able to put on it. To be able to do exactly what I do today. I mean right down to the network. I knew I wanted to work for CBS since 1970 when I was 11 because CBS broadcast the Masters. And that’s what I wanted to do.
Q: When you were growing up, you wanted to be like a Jim McKay. And now some of these kids grow up wanting to be like a Jim Nantz …
A: Well, you’re being nice. That would be such a high compliment. I did truly look up to that man and many of his brethren of his generation. I hope there are kids out there that put value in the story telling side of sports television and don’t look at sports television as necessarily being just an anchor trying to crack a bunch of jokes. There are people that do that, and they do that very well. But I think if you really love the purity of storytelling then the opportunity to call games and round up information, assimilate information during the week and get the experience and the seasoning of how you then assimilate that information and weave it together, package it together and to tell a coach’s story. And then hopefully more than just a coaches story. A story that has a heartbeat to it. A story that reaches people. Well, that’s the real art of my business today and what I attempt to do if I can every week.
Q: You definitely don’t take things for granted?
A: Oh, I thank my lucky stars every single day before my feet hit the floor for the gift I’ve been given. The blessing that I have to be able to do this job. Believe me, I realize a lot of people would like to be doing the same thing, and who are just as qualified as I am—if not more. I’m just very grateful for everything that I have.
andymendlowitz@coachesaid.com
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