Alabama kicks off its season this weekend in Tuscaloosa and on the radio call of the game will be veteran Alabama broadcaster Chris Stewart. While Stewart has been a stalwart on the men’s basketball and baseball broadcasts, he’s filling in for Eli Gold, the Voice of the Crimson Tide since 1988.
Gold will miss the beginning of the Alabama football season with an unspecified ailment. Leading up to the game, Stewart agreed to come on The Paul Finebaum Show to preview the game and before the two parted ways, Finebaum asked Stewart about how he felt getting to broadcast football for his honorary alma mater.
“I am trying to enjoy it,” Stewart began. “This is a special opportunity for somebody who grew up an Alabama fan. Who has lived always within 45 minutes of where I was born in Fairfield, just west of Birmingham. Who grew up listening to a dear friend of yours in John Forney. Who grew up and got to know Paul Kennedy who followed John. Who has been friends with and worked with Eli for basically twenty years in some capacity on Alabama football broadcasts. It should be very special, very enjoyable. It is more than tempered given the circumstances because I can certainly relate to what Eli is dealing with.”
Stewart, somber and respectful in his tone, then mentioned that while it’s an honor to call the game, it doesn’t come without a heavy heart.
“It’s bittersweet. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” Stewart added, “and yet it’s one I hope I don’t have for very long because that would mean he’s gotten well and able come back and take a job that’s rightfully his.”
