Dick Enberg

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Dick Enberg
Born	January 9, 1935 (age 72) Mount Clemens, Michigan
Occupation	Sportscaster

Dick Enberg (born January 9, 1935 in Mount Clemens, Michigan) is an American sportscaster. Enberg is one of the most prominent and respected play-by-play announcers in network television history, with a career spanning more than forty years. He is recognizable by his trademark exclamation, "Oh, my!"

Another enduring element of Enberg's broadcasting legacy is his ability to provide warm and poignant reflections on the sporting events he covers. As NBC's longtime voice of the Wimbledon tennis championships (alongside Bud Collins and, later, John McEnroe), Enberg regularly concluded the network's coverage of the two-week event with thematically appropriate observations accompanied by a montage of video clips. "Enberg Essays," as they have come to be known, is a now-regular feature of CBS' coverage of college basketball's Final Four. Enberg continues to provide end-of-tournament commentaries on the three grand slam tennis events he covers.

Contents 1 Education 2 Early career 2.1 Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head 3 NBC 4 Current roles 5 Honors 6 Trivia 7 External links

[edit] Education

Enberg was educated at Central Michigan University and Indiana University, earning master's and doctorate degrees in health sciences at the latter institution. From 1961 to 1965 he was an assistant professor and baseball coach at California State University, Northridge, then known as San Fernando Valley State College.

Dick Enberg is also a member of Phi Sigma Kappa.

[edit] Early career

In 1965, Enberg began a full-time sportscasting career, calling radio broadcasts for the California Angels of Major League Baseball, the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League, and UCLA Bruins basketball. After every Angels victory, he would wrap up his broadcast with, "And the halo shines tonight." Four times Enberg was named California Sportscaster of the Year.

In the early 1970s, Enberg hosted the syndicated television game show Sports Challenge, and co-produced the Emmy Award-winning sports-history series The Way It Was for PBS.

[edit] Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head

In the 1970 opening conference game in Pauley Pavilion, Oregon went into a stall against the UCLA Bruins. Enberg had run out of statistics and began to fill his television broadcast with small talk. The movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had just been released, and Enberg was humming the tune to "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head", but did not know the words. Two nights later, at the Oregon State game, many students brought the lyrics to the song. Enberg promised that he would sing the song if UCLA won the conference championship. He sang the song following the final game of the season. The event was recorded in the Los Angeles Times and was later recounted in the book Pauley Pavilion: College Basketball's Showplace by David Smale. During the 2006 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship broadcast, there was a short feature on the event.

[edit] NBC

In 1975, Enberg joined the NBC television network. For the next 25 years, he broadcast a plethora of sports and events for NBC, including the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the U.S. Open golf championship, college football, college basketball, the Wimbledon and French Open tennis tournaments, heavyweight boxing, Breeders' Cup horse racing, and the Olympic Games.

While on The NFL on NBC, Enberg called eight Super Bowls (alongside the likes of Merlin Olsen, Bob Trumpy, Phil Simms and Paul Maguire), the last being Super Bowl XXXII in 1998. Enberg also anchored NBC's coverage of Super Bowl XIII (that particular game was called by Curt Gowdy) in 1979.

Enberg was scheduled to be the prime time host for NBC's coverage of the 1980 Summer Olympics from Moscow. After the United States opted to boycott the games, NBC decided to greatly reduce their Olympic broadcasting hours. Although Enberg now hosted a two hour wrap-up show each night, he was still given credit for being the anchor.

According to his autobiography, Oh My, Enberg was informed by NBC that he would become the lead play-by-play voice of Major League Baseball Game of the Week beginning with the 1982 World Series (where he shared the play-by-play duties with Joe Garagiola alongisde analyst Tony Kubek) and through subsequent regular seasons. He wrote that on his football trips, he would read every Sporting News to make sure he was current with all the baseball news and notes. Then he met with NBC executives in September 1982, and they informed him that Vin Scully was in negotiations to be their lead baseball play-by-play man (teaming with Joe Garagiola while Tony Kubek would team with Bob Costas) and would begin with the network in the spring of 1983. Therefore, rather than throw him in randomnly for one World Series, Enberg wrote that he hosted the pregame/postgame shows while the team of Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek did the games. According to the book, Enberg wasn't pleased about the decision (since he loved being the California Angels' radio voice in the 1970s and was eager to return to baseball) but the fact that NBC was bringing in Scully, arguably baseball's best announcer, was understandable. Enberg added that NBC also gave him a significant pay increase as a pseudo-apology for not coming through on the promise to make him the lead baseball play-by-play man.

In addition to his career in sports broadcasting, Enberg hosted three game shows beside the aforementioned Sports Challenge: The Perfect Match in 1967, Baffle on NBC from 1973 through 1974, and Three for the Money on NBC in 1975.

[edit] Current roles

Enberg was hired by CBS in 2000, and now calls that network's NFL and college basketball action, and the U.S. Open tennis tournament, as well as contributing to coverage of The Masters and PGA Championship golf.

Since 2004, Enberg has served as lead commentator for ESPN2's coverage of the Wimbledon, French Open, and Australian Open tennis tournaments, and in 2006 he began calling Thursday-night NFL games for Westwood One radio. Also in 2006, Enberg began narrating a documentary style television series for Fox Sports Net called In Focus.

[edit] Honors

Enberg has garnered many awards and honors over the years, including 13 Emmy Awards (as well as a Lifetime Achievement Emmy), nine National Sportscaster of the Year awards, the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Pete Rozelle Award, the NBA's Curt Gowdy Award, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Enberg is the only sportscaster thus far to win Emmys in three categories (broadcasting, writing, and producing), and in 1973 became the first U.S. sportscaster to visit the People's Republic of China.

Enberg was inducted into Central Michigan University's Athletics Hall of Fame in 1993. (source: cmuchippewas.com) Enberg was raised in Armada, Michigan and was responsible for the naming of the Armada High School yearbook, the Regit (Tiger spelled backwards), a name it has to this day.

Indiana University awarded Enberg an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 2002. He would be inducted into the Indiana University Intercollegiate Athletics Hall of Fame in the fall of 2006.

[edit] Trivia

• Dick Enberg's surname is of Swedish origin. While starting out at KTLA-TV, Enberg was pressured into changing his name professionally to Dick Breen out of fear that Enberg would be seen as too ethnic sounding (i.e. Jewish).

• Enberg penned a one-man theatrical play titled (Al) "McGuire" after his former television broadcast partner and late friend. It debuted at Marquette University's Helfaer Theater in 2005. There may be plans to take the show on the road, as it drew positive reviews as an accurate portrayal of the eccentric coach.

• While a student at Indiana, Enberg voiced the first radio broadcast of the Little 500, the bike racing event memorialized in the film Breaking Away.

[edit] External links

• CBS Biography: Dick Enberg
• CMUChippewas.com interview 2001
• Oh my! 50 years and still counting for Dick Enberg
• Enberg, Carter to call games on Westwood One

Preceded by Jim McKay	American television prime time anchor, Summer Olympic Games 1980	Succeeded by Jim McKay
Preceded by Keith Jackson and Al Michaels	World Series network television play-by-play announcer (with Joe Garagiola in 1982) 1982	Succeeded by Al Michaels (in odd numbered years only) and Vin Scully (in even numbered years only)