Jim Nantz’s Journey

My whole life launched as a student athlete at the University of Houston. A golf pro I knew named Ron Weber called Dave Williams, the legendary Cougars golf coach. Ron told Coach Williams that I had some game—but I really wanted to study sports broadcasting. Coach Williams watched me play a nine-hole round at The Woodlands. Afterward he said, “Jimbo, I would love you to be a Houston Cougar.” That invitation was one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received. To this day, it has profoundly affected everything else in my life.

It so happened that I was the worst player on the golf team. When I enrolled in the fall of 1977, we were coming off a national title—the 13^th among 16 titles the team won in just 30 seasons. I contributed little to the cause, but I got to be around a group of competitors, winners. They exuded positivity, and we fed off one another. One of my roommates was Fred Couples. He said he hoped one day to win the Masters.

“I don’t see why that can’t happen,” I told him. “You’ve got a game suited for that course. You have the passion. You have the ability.” I knew his path wouldn’t be mine, exactly. But I often said that I wanted to work for CBS one day, and my teammates in turn made me feel that was completely attainable. They helped me get there.

The world had a much different feel when I was a kid in Houston—very spacious and faraway. Watching live sports on television made me feel closer to distant places and to people from different cultures. I was awestruck at the ability sports announcers had to tell a story, to take me to places I only dreamed of visiting. They shrunk the world. The University of Houston in turn opened it up to me.

My entryway to the business was the basketball program. Dave Williams introduced me to Guy Lewis, the basketball coach who spent more than 30 seasons at Houston during his Hall of Fame career. He asked me to be the public address announcer at home games. Soon, as a sophomore, I was hosting his television show, which we produced on-campus for the local NBC affiliate.

I was in school at the beginning of the Phi Slama Jama era, when the team went to three straight Final Fours, and I’m still friends with so many of those players. I was the first to give Clyde “The Glide” Drexler his nickname. To see the program reach No. 1 again under Coach Kelvin Sampson for the first time in 40 years brought my heart a lot of good. It feels like my youth all over again.

I was working professionally in Houston while still in school, and a year after graduation, I moved to Salt Lake City for the chance to do play-by-play. I always knew I wanted to call games—the Super Bowl, the Final Four, the Masters—rather than remain a studio host running highlights. I figured I’d come back to the Houston market once I had some game experience. Then, life took a turn. In August of 1985, CBS called, out of the blue, and invited me to audition for a role. I passed the audition and the network hired me. By 1986, there I was in Augusta, anchoring coverage of the Masters. Fred Couples tied for 10^th that year—and, sure enough, not long after, in 1992, he won it.

Jim Nantz with his CBS Sports colleagues Grant Hill and Bill Raftery.

Jim Nantz (center) is surrounded by his fellow UH Athletics Hall of Honor members, renowned coaches of UH’s past. L-R: Rolan Walton, former baseball head coach; Dave Williams, former men’s golf coach; Bill Yeoman, former football coach; and, Guy V. Lewis, legendary men’s basketball coach.

Jim Nantz (center) is surrounded by his fellow UH Athletics Hall of Honor members, renowned coaches of UH’s past. L-R: Rolan Walton, former baseball head coach; Dave Williams, former men’s golf coach; Bill Yeoman, former football coach; and, Guy V. Lewis, legendary men’s basketball coach.

I like to think it doesn’t matter whether I’m calling the Super Bowl for an audience of 150 million people or calling the lowest-rated golf tournament of the year. I’m going to give it the same effort. You never know who’s watching—and why wouldn’t you give it your best? You get to a point in your career where you trust your instincts and experience takes over. You just go do what you’re trained to do.

“You never know who’s watching—and why wouldn’t you give it your best?”

I was part of the Final Four for 37 years. Now it’s time for someone else to get that opportunity, and for me to spend more time with my family. Broadcasting can be strangely isolating. When you look into the camera, at those millions of people, you see only the lens looking back. For the longest time, whenever I was on camera, I focused myself by imagining I was speaking to just one person—my father. When he was suffering from Alzheimer’s, I told him to listen for me to open the broadcast with the line “Hello friends.” That was my special signal to him, to let him know that I was thinking of him and that I loved him.

It’s freeing to imagine you’re speaking to your family, to your friends. That kind of closeness and community in your life truly can take you anywhere you can imagine.

The story of Jim Nantz’s remarkable sports commentating career is one of many included in “100 Years of Stories: Documenting a Century at the University of Houston.” Generously supported by UH patron, Carey C. Shuart, this project is part of an innovative storytelling collaboration and interactive public history initiative designed to showcase the important role the University has had played in shaping the city. UH students and faculty at the Center of Public History collect oral histories of notable UH alumni, then turn the recordings into articles that appear in the semi-annual publication, “Houston History,” and digital and experiential platforms.