Bob Trumpy, a pro football player-turned-Hall of Fame announcer who did color commentary on four Super Bowls, three Olympics and other events for NBC during a 30-year career in the booth, has died. He was 80. His former NFL team The Cincinnati Bengals said he died peacefully at his home surrounded by his family.
Trumpy was a member of the 1968 expansion Bengals and would play his entire 10-year NFL career with the club. He went to four Pro Bowls as a pass-catching tight end, including each of his first three seasons. But it was his second career that punched his ticket for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
After his NFL retirement, Trumpy became a sports talk host on WCKY-AM in Cincinnati. He joined NBC Sports as a color analyst in 1978, partnering on TV first with Sam Nover, then Bob Costas and Don Criqui. He was NBC Radio’s lead booth analyst in the mid-1980s, calling back-to-back Super Bowls and Monday Night Football. He also led a sports talk show for WLW-AM in Cincinnati throughout the ’80s.
Then in 1992, he was partnered with legendary play-by-play man Dick Enberg on NBC’s No. 1 NFL announcing team, serving as its color commentator until 1995. They called the 1993 and 1994 Super Bowls. Trumpy would spend three more seasons calling games for NBC, until it lost the NFL package in 1997.
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“In addition to being a former player and having a great set of pipes, what made Bob great was that he was never afraid to give his opinion,” said Jon Miller, President of Programming at NBC Sports & NBCSN, who worked with Trumpy in the 1980s and 1990s. “He did his homework and had a great passion for the sport. Bob’s one of the few guys who could talk about the game as well as he played it. This honor is well deserved.”
Dubbed by one producer as “The Voice of God” for his rich baritone, Trumpy then became the color analyst for Sunday Night Football on Westwood One Radio from 2000-04 and again from 2006-07, retiring after the 2007 season.
Trumpy received the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2014, an honor given for lifetime achievement in NFL broadcasting.
During his announcing career, Trumpy also called three Summer Olympic Games — Seoul 1998, Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996 — covering volleyball, boxing, weightlifting and other events. He also called golf for NBC, including three Ryder Cups.