As rumors swirl regarding Jim Nantz’s contract negotiations, there was never a moment where any of us thought he would make the decision to leave CBS during the Super Bowl.
But according to Andrew Marchand of The New York Post, there was a former broadcaster who did just that. After spending a half season with NBC in 1995, Montana quit during their Super Bowl broadcast on Jan. 28, 1996 featuring the Cowboys and Steelers.
“At halftime, I called my wife from the phone,” Montana told The Post. “We all had phones next to us and said, ‘I quit. I’m out of here. I can’t do this.’”
It’s hard to imagine a quarterback whose legacy is tied to going 4-0 in the Super Bowl would have any blemishes or negative memories surrounding the game. But Montana’s brief career as a broadcaster was widely viewed as a bust even before he quit. As great as he was on the field, Montana struggled to provide interesting and definitive opinions as a broadcaster
Montana joined Greg Gumbel, Mike Ditka, Joe Gibbs and Ahmad Rashad in the studio for NBC during his first year of retirement. According to the former quarterback, he knew it was over when he made a point during the Super Bowl pre-halftime meeting that was dismissed, only to hear another analyst offer the same analysis on-air and be lauded for it.
“Once, I stepped away, I said, ‘Why did you do that?’ I wanted to kill myself,” Montana told Marchand, who noted the phrase was not used in a literal sense. “You had another year on that contract. I really started looking more about my health.”
