Greg Gumbel, Who Called N.F.L. and N.C.A.A. Games, Dies at 78

Greg Gumbel, the sports broadcaster who called some of the biggest football and college basketball games on two networks during a career that spanned five decades, has died. He was 78.

His family confirmed his death on Friday afternoon in a social media post from CBS Sports, where Mr. Gumbel had worked since 1989. He had been diagnosed with cancer.

For decades, Mr. Gumbel served as a play-by-play announcer for CBS’s National Football League coverage. In 2001, he became the first Black sportscaster in that role covering a Super Bowl. He also covered the National Collegiate Athletic Association men’s basketball tournament for the network and had spent four years reporting on the American Football Conference for NBC Sports.

He got his first chance as an announcer in the early 1970s, when a boss at the NBC affiliate in Chicago, Channel 5, told him that he wanted to broadcast a high school basketball game every Saturday, as Mr. Gumbel recalled in an interview with the sportscaster Kenny McReynolds published in 2021.

“He said, ‘I have this idea, and I want you to take it and run with it,’” Mr. Gumbel said in the interview. “We introduced our audience to a lot of guys who went on to become famous.”

Mr. Gumbel’s career took off in the 1980s, when he began to cover the National Basketball Association. He called his first N.F.L. game in 1988.