Bob Trumpy, who was an original member of the Cincinnati Bengals for 10 years before enjoying a career as a network radio and television analyst, has died. He was 80.
The Bengals announced that Trumpy died peacefully Sunday and was surrounded by family at home in the Cincinnati area. The team had a moment of silence before its game against the Chicago Bears.
“I’ve known Bob since we started here and he had an extraordinary career as both a player and a broadcaster,” Bengals president Mike Brown said in a statement. “He was an exceptional and rare tight end who could get downfield and split zone coverages. Speed was his hallmark. He was as fast as any wide receiver and was a deep threat. That was rare for a tight end then and it’s rare now.
“As a broadcaster, he made his mark both locally and nationally and excelled at sports other than football in a career that was as successful as what he accomplished on the field.”
Trumpy played collegiately at the University of Utah before being drafted by the AFL expansion Bengals in the 12th round of the 1968 common draft. He scored the franchise’s first receiving touchdown on a 58-yard reception against Denver on Sept. 15, 1968.
Trumpy’s 4,600 receiving yards, 35 receiving touchdowns and 15.4 yards per catch remain the most by a tight end in team history.
After retiring, Trumpy went on to have a distinguished career in radio and television. He joined NBC Sports as an NFL analyst in 1978 and called games through 1997, when it lost the AFC package to CBS.
Trumpy was NBC’s lead analyst with Dick Enberg from 1992-94 and he called two Super Bowls. He also called and two Super Bowls with Don Criqui on radio and would be a part of three Summer Olympics and three Ryder Cups for NBC.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame gave Trumpy the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award in 2014 for lifetime achievement in NFL broadcasting.
“Every town has someone that’s the heartbeat and Bob was that for Cincinnati,” NBC analyst Cris Collinsworth said by phone before calling Sunday night’s game between the Seattle Seahawks and Washington Commanders. “He was the most brutally honest person I’ve heard and the first person I knew to make the jump to network television. He was also the carrot in front of me and someone who I aspired to be.”
Trumpy also was a sports talk show host in Cincinnati from 1980-89. In 1983, while hosting Sportstalk on WLW, he received a call from a despondent woman who said she was going to commit suicide.
Trumpy spent the next 2 1/2 hours on the phone with the woman — who identified herself as “Sugar” — until police located her.
“I don’t know why she called a sports talk show,” Trumpy told the Los Angeles Times in 1993. “It probably was just the first phone number she heard on the radio and decided to call it.
“I sure didn’t feel like a hero after that. I hated that woman. She wasn’t the only one who had to go to a crisis center for therapy. So did I, since I couldn’t figure out why I hated her. They convinced me I hated her because of what she put me through.”
Collinsworth took over from Trumpy on Sportstalk in 1989 and called it a great training ground for his eventual rise at NBC and Fox.
“I don’t know anything harder than talk radio. You get over your fear of anyone being upset at you,” Collinsworth said. “I had fun going on his show over the years. He was a good friend.”
