Westwood One's Kevin Harlan Named 'Sportscaster of the Year'

Kevin Harlan

Thomas Boswell, Woody Durham, Bryant Gumbel and Dick Weiss have been voted into the National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame and will be inducted this June, NSMA executive director Dave Goren announced. Goren also said that NSMA members voted Westwood One sports announced Kevin Harlan as the 2017 National Sportscaster of the Year, Adrian Wojnarowski as the 2017 National Sportswriter of the Year; and members in each state elected 105 state Sportscasters and Sportswriters of the Year from 49 states, plus the District of Columbia.

They will be honored during the 59th annual NSMA Awards Weekend, June 23-25, 2018 in Winston-Salem, N.C.

Boswell is one of the pre-eminent baseball writers in the country, having served as a Washington Post sports columnist since 1969. Boswell is also the author of several books, including Why Time Begins on Opening Day, The Heart of the Order, and Why Life Imitates the World Series. In 1984, his peers voted him the 1984 NSMA D.C. Sportswriter of the Year.

Durham is best known for the 40 years he spent as radio play-by-play announcer for University of North Carolina football and basketball. He also spent 14 years as a television sports anchor, and is a 13-time winner of the NSMA’s North Carolina Sportscaster of the Year award.

Gumbel’s sports broadcasting career has taken him from KNBC-TV in Los Angeles to NBC, CBS, PBS and HBO. He has hosted REAL SPORTS WITH BRYANT GUMBEL on HBO since April 1995, and has won dozens of awards for his work as a host, interviewer, anchor, and reporter.

Weiss, known as “Hoops” to generations of basketball fans, worked for the Philadelphia Daily News and New York Daily News, covering college football and college and professional basketball for a total of 40 years. Currently, he writes a blog for the online site, Blue Star Media. He has also written or co-written seven books.

Winning his first NSMA National Sportscaster of the Year award, Harlan is the recognizable voice of the NFL and college basketball on CBS, the NBA on Turner Sports, and Monday Night Football on Westwood One. Harlan began his career as a 22-year-old radio and TV play-by-play announcer, calling Kansas City Kings’ games. His path has also included stints as play-by-play announcer with the University of Kansas, University of Missouri, Kansas City Chiefs, Chicago Bears, NBC, ESPN, and FOX Sports.

Wojnarowski has won the NSMA National Sportswriter of the Year award for the first time. Known for his NBA scoops, he left Yahoo Sports after nearly ten years, and on July 1, 2017, returned to his hometown of Bristol, Conn. to work at ESPN. Before Yahoo, Wojnarowski wrote for The Record (Bergen County, NJ), Fresno Bee and Waterbury Republican-American. He is a two-time winner of the Associated Press Spots Editors’ “Columnist of the Year” award.

Notable among the state winners:

• Indiana University radio play-by-play announcer Don Fischer was voted Indiana Sportscaster of the Year for the 25th time
• Jack Ebling, who won three Michigan Sportswriter of the Year awards, was voted the Michigan Sportscaster of the Year for the first time
• Kanoa Leahey becomes the third member of his family to Hawaii’s Sportscaster of the Year Award. His grandfather, Chuck Leahey, won the award twice in the 1960s. His father, Jim Leahey, won it 17 times between 1971 and 1991.