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
“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.”
FRISCO, Texas — A dynamic new quarterback, a new offensive system and two projected first-round picks up front have Utah coach Kyle Whittingham feeling enthusiastic about the Utes’ chances of bouncing back from a disastrous debut season in the Big 12.
Utah was voted No. 1 in the Big 12 preseason poll last year after joining from the Pac-12, but a brutal run of injuries and inconsistency resulted in a seven-game conference losing streak and a 5-7 finish — the program’s first losing season since 2013.
After weeks of contemplation about his future and what was best for the program, Whittingham, the third-longest-tenured head coach in FBS, decided in December to return for his 21st season with the Utes.
“The bottom line and the final analysis was I couldn’t step away on that note,” Whittingham told ESPN at Big 12 media days Wednesday. “It was too frustrating, too disappointing. As much as college football has changed with all the other factors that might pull you away, that was the overriding reason: That’s not us, that’s not who we are. It just left a bad taste in my mouth. I did not want to miss the opportunity to try to get that taste out.”
“The bottom line and the final analysis was I couldn’t step away on that note. It was too frustrating, too disappointing. … That’s not us. That’s not who we are. It just left a bad taste in my mouth. I did not want to miss the opportunity to try to get that taste out.”
Utah coach Kyle Whittingham on going 5-7 in 2024
Whittingham and Utes defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley conducted a national search for a new offensive coordinator and quickly zeroed in on New Mexico‘s Jason Beck. Then they managed to land Devon Dampier, Beck’s first-team All-Mountain West quarterback, via the transfer portal.
After finishing 11th nationally in total offense with 3,934 yards and 31 total touchdowns and putting up the fourth-most rushing yards (1,166) among all FBS starters, Dampier followed his coach to Salt Lake City and immediately asserted himself as a difference-maker for a program that had to start four different QBs in 2024.
“He’s a terrific athlete,” Whittingham said. “He’s a guy that, if spring is any indication, he’s an exciting player, and we can’t wait to watch him this season. … He’s got that ‘it’ factor. He’s a leader. Needless to say, very excited to see what he does for us.”
“We feel they’re the best tandem in the country,” Whittingham said. “The offensive line in general, I feel, it’s the best since I’ve been there. And that’s quite a statement. We’ve had some really good offensive lines. We’ve got two first-rounders and three seniors inside that have played a lot of good football for us. That better be a strength of ours, and that’s what we’re counting on.”
Whittingham has previously said he did not want to coach past the age of 65. Now that he’s 65, he acknowledges that he might’ve arrived at a different decision about his future had the Utes ended up winning the Big 12 in 2024. He is reenergized about getting them back into contention, but he’s not ready to say whether this season might be his last.
“The best answer I can give you is, right now, I’m excited and passionate about going to work every single day,” Whittingham said. “As soon as that changes, I’ll know it’s time. I’m just counting on knowing when the time is right. I can’t tell you exactly what the circumstances will be other than losing the fire in the belly.”
Jesse joined ESPN Chicago in September 2009 and covers MLB for ESPN.com.
The automated ball-strike system is coming to the All-Star Game next week in Atlanta.
MLB officials added the feature to the annual exhibition game knowing it could be a precursor to becoming a permanent part of the major leagues as soon as next year.
The same process used this past spring training will be used for the Midsummer Classic: Each team will be given two challenges with the ability to retain them if successful. Only a pitcher, catcher or hitter can ask for a challenge and it has to happen almost immediately after the pitch. The player will tap his hat or helmet indicating to the umpire he wants to challenge while any help from the dugout or other players on the field is not allowed.
MLB officials say 72% of fans who were polled during spring training said the impact of ABS on their experience at the game was a “positive” one. Sixty-nine percent said they’d like it part of the game moving forward. Just 10% expressed negativity toward it.
MLB’s competition committee will meet later this summer to determine if ABS will be instituted next season after the league tested the robotic system throughout the minor leagues and spring training in recent years. Like almost any rule change, there were mixed reviews from players about using ABS but nearly all parties agree on one point: They prefer a challenge system as opposed to the technology calling every pitch.
As was the case in spring training, once a review is initiated, an animated replay of the pitch will be shown on the scoreboard and the home plate umpire will either uphold the call or overturn it. ABS uses Hawk-Eye system technology which tracks the pitch trajectory and location in relation to the strike zone, providing an instant assessment which can be relayed to the home plate umpire.
The All-Star Game will be played at Truist Park in Atlanta on Tuesday.
The Kansas City Royals have signed former Cy Young Award winner Dallas Keuchel to a minor league contract, the team announced Wednesday.
The 37-year-old left-hander will start at Triple-A Omaha and will earn a prorated $2 million salary if he reaches the big leagues, sources tell ESPN’s Jeff Passan.
Keuchel has not pitched in the majors for nearly a full calendar year. He elected to become a free agent on July 18, 2024, after being designated for assignment by the Milwaukee Brewers.
In four starts with the Brewers last season, Keuchel had a 5.40 ERA in 16 2/3 innings without a decision. In 13 major league seasons, the 2015 American League Cy Young winner with the Houston Astros is 103-92 with a 4.04 ERA in 282 appearances (267 starts).
After pitching his first seven seasons with the Astros, Keuchel has made appearances for six different teams since 2019. He won a World Series with Houston in 2017 and is a two-time All-Star selection and five-time Gold Glove winner.
Information from Field Level Media was used in this report.