James Shores Simpson (December 20, 1927 – January 13, 2016) was an American sportscaster, known for his smooth delivery as a

play-by-play In sports broadcasting, a sports commentator (also known as sports announcer or sportscaster) provides a real-time commentary of a game or event, usually during a live broadcast, traditionally delivered in the historical present tense. Radio was ...

man and his versatility in covering many different sports. In

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

, he won the Sports Lifetime Achievement Award, and in

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

he was inducted into the

National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association The National Sports Media Association (NSMA), formerly the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association, is an organization of sports media members in the United States, and constitutes the American chapter of the International Sports P ...

Hall of Fame A hall, wall, or walk of fame is a list of individuals, achievements, or other entities, usually chosen by a group of electors, to mark their excellence or fame in their field. In some cases, these halls of fame consist of actual halls or muse ...

Career

Jim Simpson was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in nearby

Chevy Chase, Maryland Chevy Chase () is the name of both a town and an unincorporated census-designated place (Chevy Chase (CDP), Maryland) that straddle the northwest border of Washington, D.C. and Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. Several settlements in t ...

. He began his broadcasting career with a short-lived radio show, ''Hunting and Fishing with Jimmy Simpson'', when he was 15. He attended

George Washington University , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , presi ...

and served in the

Coast Guard A coast guard or coastguard is a maritime security organization of a particular country. The term embraces wide range of responsibilities in different countries, from being a heavily armed military force with customs and security duties to ...

and Navy Reserve. After several jobs in radio, he began working in television in Washington in 1949. In the early 1950s, he shared a half-hour news program at Washington's WTOP-TV with another TV newcomer,

Walter Cronkite Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist who served as anchorman for the ''CBS Evening News'' for 19 years (1962–1981). During the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the mo ...

, the future anchor of the ''

CBS Evening News The ''CBS Evening News'' is the flagship evening television news program of CBS News, the news division of the CBS television network in the United States. The ''CBS Evening News'' is a daily evening broadcast featuring news reports, feature st ...

''. He joined NBC's owned-and-operated Washington station, WRC-TV, in 1955. Simpson broadcast

Atlantic Coast Conference The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate athletic conference located in the eastern United States. Headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, the ACC's fifteen member universities compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Assoc ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

games in the early 1960s and worked as a sports reporter at WRC-TV.

NBC Sports

Eventually Simpson would broadcast many sports at NBC, including

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

tennis Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cov ...

, and

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

. For much of the 1960s and 1970s he was generally considered the network's number two play-by-play announcer, behind only Curt Gowdy. He was in

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134 ...

on November 22, 1963, preparing to call the annual Harvard-Yale football game with Lindsey Nelson and Terry Brennan, when word came of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Simpson was quoted as saying to Nelson as they walked through the tunnel of the

Yale Bowl The Yale Bowl Stadium is a college football stadium in the northeast United States, located in New Haven, Connecticut, on the border of West Haven, about 1½ miles (2½ km) west of the main campus of Yale University. The home of the American f ...

, "We will remember this walk and this moment for a long, long, time." His work on

American Football League The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. ...

(and later

American Football Conference The American Football Conference (AFC) is one of the two conferences of the National Football League (NFL), the highest professional level of American football in the United States. The AFC and its counterpart, the National Football Conference ...

) telecasts for NBC is perhaps what he is best remembered for. In 1966, Simpson and

Bill Cullen William Lawrence Francis Cullen (February 18, 1920 – July 7, 1990) was an American radio and television personality whose career spanned five decades. His biggest claim to fame was as a game show host; over the course of his career, he host ...

(who at the time, along with Simpson hosted a sports

anthology series An anthology series is a radio, television, video game or film series that spans different genres and presents a different story and a different set of characters in each different episode, season, segment, or short. These usually have a dif ...

called ''NBC Sports in Action''), were the between-periods co-hosts for NBC's

Stanley Cup Finals The Stanley Cup Finals in ice hockey (also known as the Stanley Cup Final among various media, french: Finale de la Coupe Stanley) is the National Hockey League's (NHL) championship series to determine the winner of the Stanley Cup, North America ...

broadcasts. It marked the first time that the Stanley Cup Finals were broadcast on American network television. It was also the first time that hockey games were broadcast on network television in

color Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associ ...

. The CBC would follow suit the following year. On January 15, 1967, Simpson (along with former quarterback George Ratterman) called

Super Bowl I The first AFL–NFL World Championship Game (known retroactively as Super BowlI and referred to in contemporaneous reports, including the game's radio broadcast, as the Super Bowl) was an American football game played on January 15, 1967, at the ...

for

NBC Radio The National Broadcasting Company's NBC Radio Network (known as the NBC Red Network prior to 1942) was an American commercial radio network which was in operation from 1926 through 2004. Along with the NBC Blue Network it was one of the first tw ...

. He also called several

World Series The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winner of the Worl ...

for

, as well as numerous

Orange Bowl The Orange Bowl is an annual American college football bowl game played in the Miami metropolitan area. It has been played annually since January 1, 1935, making it, along with the Sugar Bowl and the Sun Bowl, the second-oldest bowl game in ...

games, the

1966 FIFA World Cup Final The 1966 FIFA World Cup Final was a football match played at Wembley Stadium, London, on 30 July 1966 to determine the winner of the 1966 FIFA World Cup, the eighth FIFA World Cup. The match was contested by England and West Germany, with Englan ...

(via tape delay), and several

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a multi ...

for NBC television.

ESPN

In 1979, after Week 2 of the

NFL season The National Football League (NFL) regular season begins on the weekend following the first Monday of September (i.e, the weekend following the Labor Day holiday) and ends in early January, after which that season's playoffs tournament begins. I ...

, the fledgling

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...

cable sports network brought Simpson on board to provide some needed credibility with sports fans. Simpson broadcast th
first NCAA basketball game
the network televised, with flamboyant Dick Vitale as the color man. Vital
credits
Simpson with helping him develop as a sportscaster. Simpson also called USFL, NBA,

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football in the United States, American football rules first gained populari ...

, and

College World Series The College World Series (CWS), officially the NCAA Men's College World Series (MCWS), is an annual baseball tournament held in June in Omaha, Nebraska. The MCWS is the culmination of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Divisi ...

games for ESPN, in 1988 called the

Baltimore Orioles The Baltimore Orioles are an American professional baseball team based in Baltimore. The Orioles compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. As one of the American League's eight charter ...

' local telecasts on

WMAR-TV WMAR-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Baltimore, Baltimore, Maryland, United States, affiliated with American Broadcasting Company, ABC and owned by the E. W. Scripps Company. The station's studios and offices are located on York Road ( ...

(the NBC affiliate at the time), and called

figure skating Figure skating is a sport in which individuals, pairs, or groups perform on figure skates on ice. It was the first winter sport to be included in the Olympic Games, when contested at the 1908 Olympics in London. The Olympic disciplines are me ...

at the

1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment building in Amsterdam after two of its engin ...

and

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nels ...

Winter Olympics The Winter Olympic Games (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques d'hiver) is a major international multi-sport event held once every four years for sports practiced on snow and ice. The first Winter Olympic Games, the 1924 Winter Olympics, were h ...

for TNT. After his sportscasting days Simpson retired to St. Croix,

Virgin Islands The Virgin Islands ( es, Islas Vírgenes) are an archipelago in the Caribbean Sea. They are geologically and biogeographically the easternmost part of the Greater Antilles, the northern islands belonging to the Puerto Rico Trench and St. Cro ...

. Among other firsts he was the initial U.S. sportscaster to appear live via satellite from

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

, and he was involved in the first American sportscast using

instant replay Instant replay or action replay is a video reproduction of something that recently occurred which was both shot and broadcast live. The video, having already been shown live, is replayed in order for viewers to see again and analyze what had j ...

technology. In

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; " Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discover ...

, ESPN brought Simpson back from retirement to do play-by-play for a series of college basketball games in a "turn back the clock" format on the ESPN Classic network. He died on January 13, 2016, in Scottsdale, Arizona at the age of 88.

References

*''Voices of the Game'' by Curt Smith (Diamond Communications, Inc. 1987) *''Bud Wilkinson: An Intimate Portrait of an American Legend'' by Jay Wilkinson and Gretchen Hirsch (Sagamore Publishing 1994) *''Living a Dream'' by Dick Vitale (Sports Publishing 2003)

External links

*
NSSA Hall of Fame photograph and brief biographySimpson saw start of Super Bowl, ESPN
{{DEFAULTSORT:Simpson, Jim 1927 births 2016 deaths American Football League announcers American horse racing announcers American television sports announcers Association football commentators Baltimore Orioles announcers Boxing commentators College baseball announcers in the United States College basketball announcers in the United States College football announcers Figure skating commentators Golf writers and broadcasters Major League Baseball broadcasters National Basketball Association broadcasters National Football League announcers National Hockey League broadcasters Olympic Games broadcasters People from Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands Television personalities from Washington, D.C. Tennis commentators United States Coast Guard enlisted United States Football League announcers United States Navy reservists