Doug Gottlieb was recently reminded of a gaffe he made during NCAA tournament coverage for CBS back in 2013, and on Monday the FOX Sports Radio host talked publicly about the joke gone wrong for the first time.
In his In The Bonus podcast for his national radio show, Gottlieb talked about where the idea for the joke originated.
A friend joked earlier that week that Gottlieb’s presence among Greg Gumbel, Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley and Greg Anthony would actually bring some diversity to the set considering Gottlieb would be the only white guy at the desk. Gottlieb thought he’d work that in somehow during a segment, noting that there was no oversight on what would be said on the air.
“No one said, ‘Don’t do that,'” Gottlieb said. “They should have. Somebody should’ve said, ‘Don’t do that.'”
Doug added that he shouldn’t have tried to do too much.
“All I should have said was, ‘Man I’m just so honored to be here with these legends. You guys let me know when you need me. Otherwise, I’ll just kind of layout in the cut,'” he said. “But instead I said something stupid where I butchered the line and is like, ‘I’m just here to give a white man’s perspective.’ I was just trying to be funny.”
“You’re like, ‘Holy shit, am I gonna get fired during the break?'” Gottlieb said later. “That’s what you feel like.”
Doug said he managed to keep his composure through the next segments until a commercial break. He mentioned how no one at the desk was speaking to him. After a text from Seth Davis asking if he was OK, Doug said he inevitably heard directly from someone at CBS about the joke.
“I get a tap on my shoulder, and it’s one of the gentlemen that hired me at CBS,” he said. “And he asked me, ‘What the f–k are you doing?'”
Gottlieb said he reiterated that he was just trying to make a joke. But he said it was a big-time mistake with the network that he could’ve avoided completely.
“It was a f–k up, because I didn’t need it,” he said. “I didn’t need to try and crack a joke when I’m naturally pretty humorous. And not really my job. And let Kenny and Charles be funny. They are really, really funny, and no one is ever offended by anything they say.”
Doug said that there was one person that attempted to get him fired over social media that night. He had a special message for that individual.
“To that guy, f–k you,” he said.
