Jim Nantz, voice of the NCAA Tournament for CBS, is leaving the sport after Monday’s game
It was the last shining moment for Jim Nantz on Monday night, at least as it pertains to his indefatigable and indomitable college basketball broadcasting run.
After the final horn sounded in the NCAA men’s title game, Connecticut beating San Diego State 76-59, Nantz stepped away as the tournament’s lead play-by-play voice. It is a job he has held – and excelled at – for 32 years, since assuming the duties for the 1991 tournament.
It is not the end of his professional road. Nantz, 63, will continue calling NFL games and the Masters golf tournament. But he and his wife, Courtney, have a daughter, 9, and a son, 7. A relentless schedule that has him on the road for roughly 40 weeks a year simply is taking him away from them too much, he decided.
When Nantz replaced Brent Musburger as the tournament’s lead voice in 1991, he partnered with Billy Packer, who became one of his best friends. During his final broadcast Monday night, Bill Raftery and Grant Hill were on the microphone with him.
Throughout these 32 years, Nantz’s silky-smooth voice and near-perfect timing have been the soundtrack to, among many other shining moments, all five of coach Mike Krzyzewski’s national championships at Duke and Dean Smith’s final title at North Carolina in 1993.
In multiple ways, Nantz went full circle.
His final championship game was at NRG Stadium in Houston, Nantz’s onetime home, where he went to school at the University of Houston. As a student there, Nantz became the public-address announcer for the men’s basketball team and the host of a television show for its coach, Guy Lewis.
Also, former guard Bobby Hurley was one of the stars for Duke in the first championship game Nantz called: the Blue Devils’ 72-65 win over Kansas in 1991. On Monday night, Hurley’s brother, Dan, was on the sideline as coach of Connecticut’s team.
San Diego State coach Brian Dutcher was Steve Fisher’s top assistant in the next two title games called by Nantz, Michigan’s 71-51 blowout loss to Hurley’s Duke team in 1992 and the Fab Five’s loss to North Carolina, punctuated by Chris Webber’s infamous timeout call.
Ian Eagle, a Syracuse graduate who was hired at CBS in 1998, is set to replace Nantz as the tournament’s lead play-by-play voice in 2024.