Bob Costas on Dick Enberg: “He was a sentimental man but there was nothing inauthentic about that enthusiasm”

Sports Illustrated

“With all due respect to other great announcers in the ‘70s and ‘80s if you were to have a decathlon of play-by-play, he would have won that decathlon of play-by-play because he did so many things exquisitely well,” said Costas of his former NBC Sports colleague, who died Thursday at age 82. “He did seven or eight things really, really well, and was at or near the top of all those things. And he did with the combination of extraordinary craftsmanship, meticulous preparation, facility with words and a genuine—not a manufactured, but a genuine—boyish enthusiasm. He was a sentimental man but there was nothing inauthentic about that enthusiasm.”

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• Tom Brokaw, Keith Olbermann, Chuck D and Cher also offer their condolences