Craig Sager
Craig Sager was born in Batavia, Illinois, United States on June 29th, 1951 and is the Journalist. At the age of 65, Craig Sager biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
At 65 years old, Craig Sager has this physical status:
Craig Graham Sager Sr. (June 29, 1951 – December 15, 2016) was an American sports reporter, covering, from 1981 until the year of his death, an array of sports for CNN and its sister stations, TBS and TNT. Sager is best known for his having worked as a sideline reporter who paced the floors of the National Basketball Association, as he invariably sported a specimen from his vast collection of garishly eccentric jackets and suits.
He was a 2016 inductee of the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame.
During the 2017 National Basketball Association All-Star game, it was announced that Sager was the 2017 recipient of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Curt Gowdy Media Award.
Early life and education
Sager was born June 29, 1951, in Batavia, Illinois. He attended Batavia High School, gaining recognition in 1966 by writing an essay entitled "How and Why I Should Show Respect to the American Flag" for a patriotism contest sponsored by the American Legion. Sager's essay was published in the Congressional Record. It drew editorial accolades from conservative newspapers around the country for his declaration that he was an "untypical teen" of the silent majority that was not part of any protest movement and "happy we were born in America and not in Havana, Moscow, or Peiping".
Growing up in Batavia, Sager was friends with his basketball teammates Ken Anderson and Dan Issel. Greg Issel, Dan's brother, was very close with Sager. Anderson became a quarterback in the NFL with the Cincinnati Bengals and was named the NFL Most Valuable Player in 1981. Issel became a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame basketball player with the Kentucky Colonels and Denver Nuggets. Later, Issel said of his Batavia teammates: "What Batavia instilled in all three of us—myself, Kenny and Craig—was a solid work ethic. I hope the people of Batavia appreciate how much Batavia meant to Craig and all of us, because we appreciate what Batavia did for us."
Sager was a 1973 graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he earned a bachelor's degree in Speech. He was a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. After little success on the school's football and basketball teams, Sager found his calling by donning the garb of Willie the Wildcat, the school's mascot, for three years—a foreshadowing of his professional sports entertainment career.
Personal life
Sager had a total of five children from two marriages, first marrying Lisa Gabel of Chillicothe, Missouri in 1980.
One son from his first marriage, Craig II, was a walk-on wide receiver at the University of Georgia. Craig II also filled in for his father as a sideline reporter during his absence in 2014.
Sager had five children: Kacy, Craig II and Krista (from his first marriage to Lisa Gabel), and Ryan and Riley, with his second wife, Stacy.
Career
Sager began his career as a reporter for WXLT (now WWSB-Channel 40) in Sarasota, Florida. In 1974, he worked as a radio news director, making $95 a week for his efforts, a paltry sum that was supplemented by his exposure to sports events. On April 8, 1974, Sager was in Atlanta and skipped covert to be on the field for his 715th home run, brashly trying to interview the superstar at home plate amid widespread fan pandemonium.
Sager served as a weatherman at WLCY-TV (now WTSP-TV) in St. Petersburg, where he was mentored by then Sports Director Dick Crippen in the mid-1970s. He then joined WINK-TV in Ft. Myers as a sports reporter, where he covered the Kansas City Royals in spring training at Terry Park.
Sager appeared on KMBC-Channel 9 in Kansas City, Missouri, where he appeared on Kansas City Royals spring training games and Kansas City Chiefs preseason games during the 1970s. Sager will remain at the station until 1981. George Brett, a member of Major League Baseball, was later remembered as a "tireless worker" who would set up and focus the camera before filming his own interview, effectively becoming a "one-man crew."
Sager produced the first live remote report by CNN from the 1980 baseball playoffs and joined the network full time in 1981. While at CNN, he co-anchored CNN Sports Tonight, receiving an award for his 1985 efforts. Sager appeared on CNN's sports-oriented sister network, TBS, from 1982 to 1985.
Sager began working full time at the TBS division in 1987, hosting a 30-minute Sunday night show called The Coors Sports Page as well as reporting halftime news of Atlanta Hawks games.
Sager appeared where the network needed him most, shooting at Ted Turner's Goodwill Games from 1986 to 2001. He also covered the Pan American Games and the 1990 FIFA World Cup. For sister network TNT's coverage of the 1992 Winter Olympics, he called Nordic skiing and curling. He appeared on television news shows of golf and tennis, as well as reporting the National Football League on TNT's telecasts from 1990 to 1997.
Sager's most well-known televised role was as a sideline reporter for NBA on TNT, for which he received his first Sports Emmy Award nomination in 2012.
Sager, a natural entertainer, was known for his garish clothing choices—an impressive collection of sport coats and suits, described as "loud," "colorful," and "lively." He seldom wore the same outfit twice. One reporter investigating Sager's accumulated wardrobe within the jocular interviewer's household tallied 137 jackets before giving up, without even counting the clothes found in other closets scattered throughout the house.
Sager also worked on NBA telecasting in San Juan, Puerto Rico, the 2000 USA Basketball Championships and the 2002 World Championships of Basketball, in addition to his work on NBA telecasting. Sager has also worked as a sideline reporter for the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, as well as Turner Sports and CBS' Marv Albert, Chris Webber, and Len Elmore.
Sager was loaned to NBC Sports in 1999 to work as a field reporter for both NBC and World Series coverage of the National League Championship Series and World Series. He was both the men's and women's basketball reporter for NBC's Olympic coverage since the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. At the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, he was a reporter covering basketball for NBC Sports' coverage of the basketball game.
Sager was loaned by Time Warner's Turner Sports to cover his first NBA Finals, with his life coming to an end. Sager was hired by NBA on ESPN's ESPN regular Doris Burke to watch Game 6 of the 2016 NBA Finals. His first Finals game was fittingly, it was the last game he played before his death.
Sager's final public appearance was on July 13, 2016, when he received the Jimmy V Perseverance Award at the 2016 ESPY Awards show for fighting cancer. Sager's terminally ill Sager gave a moving acceptance address to those assembled and to a national television audience.
Sager was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame just two days before his death on December 13, 2016. At the 2017 ceremony, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences humbly awarded Sager his first Sports Emmy Award for Outstanding Sports Personality, Sports Reporter.
Sager was voted the winner of the 2017 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame's 2017 Curt Gowdy Media Award at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. In September 2017, the award was announced.
Since 2017, a replica of the Sager sports coat that he wore while accepting the Jimmy V Perseverance Award has been given as a prize to the winners of the Sager Strong Award. "A man who has been a trailblazer has been given the gift of exemplifying courage, hope, compassion, and grace." Monty Williams, Dikembe Mutombo, and Robin Roberts were the three champions from 2017 to 2019.