Nantz Loses Nothing in Transition

Jim Nantz has the routine down by now. This is the 21st year the CBS announcer will go straight from the Final Four to the Masters.

“I’m scheduled to arrive in Augusta on Tuesday around lunchtime,” Nantz said. “Only I probably won’t have time for lunch. I’ll go right to work.”

Nantz said that, ideally, he’d like a little more space between these two major events.

“I’d love some breathing room,” he said. “I asked the NCAA if the Final Four could be moved to October, but that didn’t go over too well.”

Actually, Nantz is the last person to complain. He is well aware that he has a great job.

“Imagine this as a charity auction item: Not to do my job but sit in my seat at the Final Four, have the access I have to the players and coaches, stay in my hotel, then fly down to Augusta for the Masters,” he said. “What would that go for?”

OK, the package would involve sitting next to Billy Packer at the Final Four, which some people may not consider a plus, but otherwise it sounds pretty good.

So does being CBS’ lead play-by-play announcer on the NFL, a role Nantz moved into last year after six years as the host of “The NFL Today.” Nantz will be calling the next Super Bowl.

The National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Assn. has named Nantz the 2005 sportscaster of the year, an honor he also won in 1998. In 2002 he became the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s youngest recipient of the Curt Gowdy Award. And that’s fitting. Not since Gowdy’s heyday with NBC in the 1970s has an announcer had as impressive a schedule as Nantz.

That schedule came into play a year ago when ESPN made a run at him.

Nantz doesn’t like to talk about it, but his agent, Barry Frank of IMG, confirmed ESPN wanted Nantz.

“We had to listen to it,” Frank said. “It was a very interesting, very serious offer.”

ESPN reportedly offered Nantz between $3.5 million and $4.5 million annually to be its play-by-play announcer on “Monday Night Football” and host golf on ESPN and sister network ABC.

The offer, which consisted of a salary that was about $1 million more than Nantz was making at CBS, came before Al Michaels was named lead announcer on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” (later jumping to NBC).

Nantz liked CBS and his schedule too much to leave, and ended up getting a seven-year contract extension and a salary increase to about $3.5 million.

Deciding the grass was greener on the Masters’ side of the fence turned out to be a good thing for Nantz, particularly since ABC and ESPN were not part of the PGA Tour’s new TV contract, which goes into effect next year.

Nantz, the host at the first five Final Fours he worked, has been the play-by-play announcer since 1991. His predecessor, Brent Musburger, was fired at the 1990 Final Four in Denver.

Nantz started out as a course reporter at the Masters in 1986 and has been the lead anchor since 1994.

In a special that will air April 9, Nantz will recall his first Masters in 1986, when 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus won his sixth green jacket. Nantz is the host and the executive producer of the one-hour special.