Eli Gold

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Eli Gold (born 1953) is a sportscaster, best known as the radio voice (since 1988) of the University of Alabama Crimson Tide football team alongside former Alabama and NFL quarterback Ken Stabler as a part of the Crimson Tide Sports Network, and as host (since 1982) of NASCAR Live on the Motor Racing Network. Gold has also anchored TNN and NBC Sports' Arena Football League coverage and provides radio play-by-play for Sports USA Radio Network's National Football League broadcasts.

Gold was born in December 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. He began his broadcasting career in 1972 as a weekend sports reporter for the Mutual Broadcasting System. His first specialty was announcing ice hockey for the Eastern, North American, Southern, American, Central, and the National Hockey Leagues. In the NHL, Gold announced games for the 1979-80 St. Louis Blues over KDNL-TV and was the radio play-by-play announcer for Nashville Predators during the 2006-07 NHL season.

Gold moved to Birmingham, Alabama to broadcast the Birmingham Bulls hockey team of the World Hockey Association. He created Birmingham's first local sports call-in show, Calling All Sports on WERC-AM which became a staple of Birmingham sports radio for 20 years. He eventually rose to the position of Sports Director for what was then that market's ABC affiliate, WBRC where he anchored evening news sports segments and hosted "Sports Talk with Eli", a weekly call-in show. From 2002 to 2004 he hosted a daily sports talk show also called Calling All Sports on WJOX-AM in Birmingham.

Gold has also performed announcing duties for the Birmingham Barons AA baseball team and the UAB Blazers men's basketball team. He has been voted "Alabama Sportscaster of the Year" four times by the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. He has also won the same honor from the Associated Press and United Press International.

In addition, Gold has worked with MRN Radio and TNN Motorsports as a lap-by-lap announcer of NASCAR races. He still, from time to time, can be heard on MRN's NASCAR broadcasts and remains one of the network's most recognized and popular voices.

Gold currently resides in Vestavia Hills, AL with his wife, Claudette, and his daughter, Elise.

According to NASCAR driver Kenny Wallace who also broadcasts NASCAR themed shows on SPEED Channel and St. Louis radio station KMOX-AM, Gold "is one of the most recognizable voices in NASCAR and in all of sports broadcasting."^[1]

[edit] Books

• Gold, Eli (2005). Crimson Nation: The Shaping of the South's Most Dominant Football Team. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers. ISBN 1-4016-0190-1. 

• Gold, Eli (2006). I'm a Dirty Jew and the Bama Nation Loves Me. Birmingham, AL: Crimson Tide Press. ISBN 1-4016-0887-9. 

Gold's third book was released in August 2007 and is called Bear's Boys. The book focuses on thirty-six of coach Paul "Bear" Bryant's Alabama football players and explores where they are today and how Coach Bryant's lessons impacted them in their post-University Of Alabama days.

[edit] References

• Bio at Footballspeakers.com
• capsule bio at RollTide.com