‘When people listen, they expect to hear Eli Gold’: The amazing comeback of Alabama’s radio voice
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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
Every college football stadium, no matter how large or small, shares the sounds of the actual games being played on the field. Cracks, smacks, clacks and whistles. But each venue also comes with its own unique soundtrack, a deep cut playlist of fight songs, alma maters and cheers and chants perfected over more than a century.
Each team and venue also has its own voice. No, not accents or dialects or local lexicons, but rather the radio-delivered, vocally painted pictures of that local hero who has earned the right to carry the title “The Voice of (insert your favorite team here).”
Since 1988, the Voice of Alabama Crimson Tide football has been Eli Gold. He has called the action for seven national titles, 11 SEC championships and 35 bowl games. Living rooms and tailgates from Huntsville to Mobile and Vinegar Bend to Muscadine have screamed as Gold described yet another national championship and have cried as he’s delivered bad news from lost Iron Bowls.
For more than 30 years it had become impossible to close one’s eyes and conjure up the sounds of Alabama football and not hear the voice of Gold. Until one year ago.
“I always realized how special this job was and how much it meant to me,” Gold, 69, said last week, sitting in a recliner in his Birmingham home, wearing an Alabama Football t-shirt and sipping water from an Alabama Football stadium cup in a room tastefully decorated with just the right mix of Alabama Football memorabilia. “This job is like holding a rare piece of crystal. I always knew that. It’s now been reinforced.”
Reinforced because it was taken away. Gold missed only one game over the first 32 years in the Alabama broadcast booth, and that happened only because of the coronavirus pandemic, and he still managed to miss only one game. But it was a year and a half later, in the spring of 2022, when Gold went to bed via his normal nighttime routine.
“I woke up seven, eight hours later, whatever it was, and my legs didn’t work. My legs did not work,” Gold remembered, still shaking his head in disbelief nearly 20 months later. “I could not walk. I couldn’t get out of bed. Nothing. I don’t know what happened.”
Wife Claudette dug out a wheelchair that had been left in the house by another family member and somehow managed to get her husband, who is much larger than she is, into the chair, into their SUV and to the hospital. Doctors were flummoxed and would stay that way for the remainder of 2022. For more than 200 days, Gold was in and out of hospitals, medical centers and did a stint in a skilled nursing home to learn how to walk again. There were still no answers.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Claudette admitted now. “That whole time they ran tests, and ran tests, and ran tests, and nothing showed up. They gave him steroids to build the strength back in his legs, but they still had no idea what was wrong. They kept saying, ‘Well, just take him home’ and I would reply, ‘And do what? I don’t know what to do!’ Finally, I sat down on the couch and I looked at the doctor and I said, ‘We’re not leaving here until you find out what’s wrong. We’re not leaving.'”
Over those seven months, Gold lost 140 pounds. He simply didn’t feel like eating. He also lost the entire 2022 college football season. Claudette made the call to the athletic department that Gold wouldn’t be able to make it into the booth that fall. She also made the decision to keep the details of her husband’s struggle private. When Alabama released a statement about his absence, it only described “health issues.”
“We live a public life here in Birmingham, so that felt like the best approach because we honestly didn’t know what was wrong,” she explained. “That didn’t stop people from speculating, especially as the season went on, but we honestly didn’t know. He was up and down, and we just kept going back for tests.”
That lasted until Dec. 23, 2022, when Gold developed a new complication.
“I ended with the worst case of hiccups you could ever imagine,” he said. The spasms were violent and continuous. “Not one hiccup now and then another one in five or six seconds or eight or ten seconds. But it was hiccup, hiccup, hiccup, hiccup. … I mean, one right after the next, after the next, after the next. I couldn’t even catch my breath. I couldn’t breathe. And when they investigated, they found a malignant growth in my esophagus.”
It was a tumor. Located just below the vocal cords that produce Gold’s legendary voice. The steroids and other strength-building treatments used to regain the use of his legs had also masked the issue that had caused all his problems, including the disconnect with his lower extremities. He had lymphoma.
“So, December 23rd, it was, ‘Merry Christmas, Eli, you have cancer,'” Gold said, with a laugh of surrender. “But oddly enough, there was relief in the diagnosis because now there was a target. Now we could actually start a treatment with a specific goal instead of feeling like we were guessing all the time.”
On New Year’s Eve 2022, the same day Alabama defeated Kansas State in the Sugar Bowl, Gold began chemotherapy treatments.
“I was lying there in the hospital with IV tubes going in me,” he said. “They’re dripping poisons into you and I’m lying there and I’m watching this red stuff going in, and this white stuff, clear stuff. And I realize, you know, this is for real, man.”
So was the continuing fight and the risks that came with it. There was one night Claudette and their daughter Elise were sitting in the hospital room that went from quiet to instantly filled with frantic doctors and nurses. Gold was crashing, and they warned Claudette he might not make it through the night. Then there was the day Gold’s skin became dark red, like sun poisoning, from head to toe, and his vitals started sliding again. He was allergic to the antibiotics he had been given.
Finally, on April 21, 2023, more than a year after waking up without the use of his legs, Gold rang the bell that signified the end of final cancer treatment. For Alabama fans, it was the sweetest bell heard this side of the Denny Chimes.
Praise the Lord and Roll Tide! My friend and co-worker Eli Gold just rang the bell completing his cancer treatment! pic.twitter.com/JhTdc5VHJ7
— Tom Stipe (@TomStipe_RTR) April 21, 2023
“I have seen how hard he’s worked, and I’ve seen it from beginning to the end,” Gold’s wife said as tears welled up in her eyes. “The only thing he was concerned about was going back to work. ‘I’ve got to get better for football. I’ve got to get better for football.'”
His original goal was to return for A-Day, Alabama’s spring game, the day after he rang the bell, but that didn’t happen. He wasn’t up for it and, more importantly, he wasn’t prepared. In the weeks leading up to the 2023 season he called the Tide’s other scrimmages to get his mind and eyes back up to football speed. He’s also voiced hundreds of promos for Alabama radio network affiliates and has taken to singing in the car and shower. “No one from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir will be calling me to join anytime soon, but it works.”
He won’t travel with the team this fall. Chris Stewart, who filled in for Gold last fall, will stay on the microphone to cover road duties this season, though Gold promises if Alabama is in the College Football Playoff National Championship game Jan. 8 in Houston, he’ll be there.
“My entire life I have been on the road,” he said of a career that has included stints in the NHL, countless other hockey leagues and a decades-long career in motorsports radio and television many believe should one day result in election to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
“When they played that season without me, I absolutely felt left behind, like a piece of me was missing,” Gold said. “My coworkers did such a tremendous job and were so respectful of me during my absence. But man, it hurt.”
Last Saturday, Gold was on the call for Alabama’s season opener against Middle Tennessee. It was the first time he had been in the Bryant-Denny Stadium broadcast booth to call real-life football game since Nov. 20, 2021.
“There is a tradition in any program, and Eli’s been a part of that tradition for a long, long, time,” says Bama coach Nick Saban, who does his weekly radio show alongside Gold every autumn Thursday night. “When people listen, they expect to hear Eli Gold.”
Now they will again. For how long, who knows? But Tide fans will take whatever they can get, from now until whenever the end might come. Because not so long ago, it felt like that most familiar voice in the fall soundtrack of Alabama football might not ever be heard again.
“‘That play-by-play guy is like family,” Gold said of his role in the lives of Alabama fans. “‘It’s like that comfortable, old pair of shoes. He’s there. Has been forever.'” Then Gold turned to their role in his life.
“Football is upon us. And you know, that’s the best medicine I could have had.”
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Dan Wetzel
As victims go, Lane Kiffin doesn’t seem like one.
He could have stayed at Ole Miss, made over $10 million a year, led his 11-1 team into a home playoff game and become an icon at a place where he supposedly found personal tranquility. Or he could’ve left for LSU to make over $10 million a year leading a program that has won three national titles this century.
Fortunate would be one description of such a fork in life’s road. The result of endless work and talent would be another.
But apparently no one knows a man’s burdens until they’ve walked a mile in his hot yoga pants.
Per his resignation statement on social media, it was spiritual, familial and mentor guidance that led Kiffin to go to LSU, not all those five-star recruits in New Orleans.
“After a lot of prayer and time spent with family, I made the difficult decision to accept the head coaching position at LSU,” he wrote.
In an interview with ESPN’s Marty Smith, Kiffin noted “my heart was [at Ole Miss], but I talked to some mentors, Coach [Pete] Carroll, Coach [Nick] Saban. Especially when Coach Carroll said, ‘Your dad would tell you to go. Take the shot.'” Kiffin later added: “I talked to God, and he told me it’s time to take a new step.”
After following everyone else’s advice, Kiffin discovered those mean folks at Ole Miss wouldn’t let him keep coaching the Rebels through the College Football Playoff on account of the fact Kiffin was now, you know, the coach of rival LSU.
Apparently quitting means different things to different people. Shame on Ole Miss for having some self-esteem.
“I was hoping to complete a historic six-season run … ,” Kiffin said. “My request to do so was denied by [Rebels athletic director] Keith Carter despite the team also asking him to allow me to keep coaching them so they could better maintain their high level of performance.”
Well, if he hoped enough, Kiffin could have just stayed and done it. He didn’t. Trying to paint this as an Ole Miss decision, not a Lane Kiffin decision, is absurd. You are either in or you are out.
Leaving was Kiffin’s right, of course. He chose what he believes are greener pastures. It might work out; LSU, despite its political dysfunction, is a great place to coach ball.
Kiffin should have just put out a statement saying his dream is to win a national title, and as good as Ole Miss has become, he thinks his chance to do it is so much better at LSU that it was worth giving up on his current players, who formed his best and, really, first nationally relevant team.
At least it would be his honest opinion.
Lately, 50-year-old Kiffin has done all he can to paint himself as a more mature version of a once immature person. In the end, though, he is who he is. That includes traits that make him a very talented football coach. He is unique.
He might never live down being known as the coach who bailed on a title contender. It’s his life, though. It’s his reputation.
One of college sports’ original sins was turning playcallers into life-changers. Yeah, that can happen, boys can become men. A coach’s job is to win, though.
A great coach doesn’t have to be loyal or thoughtful or an example of how life should be lived.
This is the dichotomy of what you get when you hire Kiffin. He was on a heater in Oxford, winning in a way he never did with USC or Tennessee or the Oakland Raiders.
That seemingly should continue at resource-rich LSU. Along the way, you get a colorful circus, a wrestling character with a whistle, a high-wire act that could always break bad. It rarely ends well — from airport firings to near-riot-inducing resignations to an exasperated Nick Saban.
LSU should just embrace it — the good and the not so good. What’s more fun than being the villain? Kiffin might be a problem child, but he’s your problem child. It will probably get you a few more victories on Saturdays. He will certainly get you a few more laughs on social media.
It worked for Ole Miss, at least until it didn’t. Then the Rebels had to finally push him aside. This is Lane Kiffin. You can hardly trust him in the good times.
If anything, Carter had been too nice. He probably should have demanded Kiffin pledge his allegiance weeks back, after Kiffin’s family visited Gainesville, Florida, as well as Baton Rouge.
Instead, Kiffin hemmed and hawed and extended the soap opera, gaining leverage along the way.
Blame was thrown on the “calendar,” even though it was coaches such as Kiffin who created it. And leaving a championship contender is an individual choice that no one else is making.
Blame was put on Ole Miss, as if it should just accept desperate second-class hostage status. Better to promote defensive coordinator Pete Golding and try to win with the people who want to be there.
To Kiffin, the idea of winning is seemingly all that matters. Not necessarily winning, but the idea of winning. Potential playoff teams count for more than current ones. Tomorrow means more than today. Next is better than now.
Maybe that mindset is what got him here, got him all these incredible opportunities, including his new one at LSU, where he must believe he is going to win national title after national title.
So go do that, unapologetically. Own it. Own the decision. Own the quitting. Own the fallout. Everything is possible in Baton Rouge, just not the Victim Lane act.
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Ryan S. Clark
St. Louis Blues rookie forward Jimmy Snuggerud will miss up to six weeks to have surgery on his left wrist, the team announced Monday morning.
The 21-year-old Snuggerud, who was a first-round pick by the Blues in 2022, used the opening quarter of the season to establish himself as a top-nine forward. His five goals were two away from being tied for the team lead while his 11 points are tied for sixth. He is also seventh in ice time among Blues forwards at 15:26 per game.
His performances also allowed him to maintain a presence within a rookie class that has seen several players make an impact. Snuggered entered Monday tied for eighth in goals among first-year players.
It appears the earliest Snuggerud could return to the lineup, should the six-week timeline hold, would be mid-January. That would allow him to play about 10 games before the NHL enters the Olympic break. The Blues play their last game before the break on Feb. 4.
Snuggerud isn’t the only injury the Blues are managing, with the team also announcing that forward Alexey Toropchenko is week-to-week after sustaining what they described as scalding burns to his legs in a home accident. He’s the second NHL player this season to sustain an injury at home, with Florida Panthers forward Eetu Luostarinen out of the lineup indefinitely after a “barbecuing mishap” that Panthers coach Paul Maurice shared with reporters on Nov. 19.
Toropchenko has a goal and two points while averaging 11:29 in ice time over 17 games this season.
Those absences are the latest developments in what has seen the Blues, which made the playoffs last season, endure one of the most challenging starts of any team in the NHL through the first quarter of this season.
St. Louis (9-10-7) entered Monday as part of a cluster of five teams that are within two points of the Chicago Blackhawks for the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference.
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