re: Eli Gold not returning to the radio booth

quote:

---

On WJOX this morning Greg McElroy seemed to imply that Chris Stewart was being offered broadcasting jobs by other universities, and the UA administration had to decide whether to make him the lead broadcaster or lose him entirely. They chose to elevate him, which (if all this is true) I think was absolutely the correct decision. For everyone saying "he's an icon, he's the voice of Alabama, we should have treated him better," consider this hypothetical: Rather than retiring as he did, say Nick Saban went through a three-year period where the football team went 4-8 each year -- not due to catastrophic injury luck, or an overwhelming number of transfers, but just because he wasn't coaching as well as he once did and refused to change his ways, and there was no end in sight. Would you still maintain that Saban deserved to stay the coach until he decided to retire on his own terms? I've seen a few folks essentially saying "Nobody listens to just the radio any more, so it's not as important to give an accurate picture of the game." If you don't use the radio broadcast as your sole source of info (i.e., you're at the game, or watching on TV, or whatever), I can understand your point. But many Saturdays I'm out and about, running errands, and the radio broadcast is the only way I can experience the game in real-time. And I defy any of you to listen to Eli and be able to tell me what the down and distance required would be at any given point in the game. He's an icon, no doubt ... but for the last several years he hasn't been good at the basics of play-by-play broadcasting.

---