It is safe to say that outside of Western Pennsylvania and the Carolinas, there weren’t a lot of people paying attention to the Steelers’ win over the Panthers on Sunday. The television call of the game has become a story that has people in media circles talking though after Greg Gumbel misidentified Mitch Trubisky multiple times on a single drive.
Gumbel, who was on the call alongside Adam Archuleta for CBS, referred to the Steelers’ quarterback by Sam Darnold’s name. Darnold was in the game, but he was playing for the Panthers.
Thursday morning, the mistakes were a topic of discussion on Payne & Pendergast on Houston’s Sports Radio 610. Host Sean Pendergast noted that Greg Gumbel has had a storied career, but he is getting older now and wondered if that played a role in the mistakes. He also wondered why CBS allowed it to keep happening.
“At some point, don’t you kind of elbow him and say ‘It’s Trubisky’?” he asked his partner Seth Payne.
Payne said he wouldn’t expect Archuleta or a CBS producer to correct Gumbel in the middle of a play. He added that overall, he didn’t think it was such a big deal, but it is worth asking some tough questions.
“He’s not known for that,” Payne said. “He might have to have a conversation with himself.”
Greg Gumbel is 76-years-old. He began calling NFL games for CBS in 1988. He has called the on-field action for Super Bowls and for the Olympics and hosted studio coverage of countless events. His face is well-known to American sports fans.
Payne said that fact could play into how Gumbel feels when he watches the tape back. He knows how these moments have affected other broadcasters closer to the end of their career than the beginning.
“I’m not doing this to protect anybody, but as a show of respect to some veteran broadcasters who do play-by-play who retired. They said they could sense they weren’t as sharp as they used to be and they didn’t want to go down that road where you start making little errors like that here and there and you can just tell that you aren’t what you once were.”
He reiterated that he did not think it was a particularly big deal that Greg Gumbel misidentified Mitch Trubisky, particularly because Sam Darnold was a part of the game. Little mistakes do happen. He added that he hoped that rather than it being a wake up call that it is time to retire, Gumbel would view it the way aging athletes do an realize that his self care routine my have to change in order for him to be as sharp as the audience is used to seeing him.
