Bob Trumpy, an original Bengal who blazed the trail for modern game-breaking tight ends before his unmistakable tell-it-like-it-is baritone became one of the nation's most recognizable voices, has died. He was 80.
He passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by his family.
Trumpy became synonymous with the Bengals when his spectacular debut on Sept. 15, 1968 coincided with the franchise's first victory, a 24-10 victory over the Broncos at the University of Cincinnati's Nippert Stadium in which the gangly rookie from Utah caught four balls for 114 yards to provide foreshadowing worthy of his future network TV career.
After going to four Pro Bowls as a pioneering pass-catching tight end, Trumpy went to the broadcasting booth. NBC's Charlie Jones advised Trumpy even when he was playing to take up announcing because of his smoky, rich voice, a formidable asset his one-time producer Bill "Seg," Dennison once called, "The voice of God."
Trumpy would deliver four booming decades as a Hall-of-Fame announcer calling four Super Bowls and three Olympics.
"I've known Bob since we started here and he had an extraordinary career as both a player and a broadcaster," said Bengals president Mike Brown in a statement Sunday. "He did it all very well and I regret his passing."
His broadcasting life began in the late stages of his ten-year playing career, when his wildly popular "Sports Talk," radio program on Cincinnati's far-reaching WLW-AM took on all-comers and set the stage for working back-to-back Super Bowls and patrolling Ryder Cup fairways.
"I remember the general manager of WLW say some years afterwards that Trumpy carried this station for a decade with his program," Brown recalled.
It also launched a stream of ex-Bengals into national broadcasting booths while he kick-started the announcing careers of 40-year Bengals radio analyst Dave Lapham and the voice of Sunday Night Football Cris Collinsworth.
"A real pro. He always did his homework. Never took any shortcuts. He was a great guy to learn from," Lapham told Bengals.com back in 2014. "He taught me never to say no. Whatever they want you to do, do it."
When Trumpy received the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Pete Rozelle Radio & Television Award in 2014 for "longtime exceptional contributions to radio and television in professional football," he credited those early days at "The Big One."
"When you have to do a show five nights a week three hours at a time, you really have to work," Trumpy told Bengals.com then. "It made me responsible for whatever I said, and I still stand by what I said."
Before he stood up for what he said, Trumpy changed what people would say about pro tight ends.
A skinny 12th-rounder from the first draft of Bengals head coach Paul Brown in 1968, Trumpy conspired with Bengals equipment manager Tom Gray to get weighed in that first training camp with hidden weights.
He would become a powerhouse. Trumpy caught the Bengals' first touchdown pass when quarterback John Stofa hit him with a 58-yarder in that scrapbook first game.
Mike Brown remembers during Trumpy's rookie year that the Kansas City Chiefs, a perennial AFL power a year away from winning the Super Bowl, contacted the Baby Bengals about trading for Trumpy.
Paul Brown and quarterbacks/receivers coach Bill Walsh would go on to break convention and use Trumpy as much like a wide receiver as they did a tight end in their burgeoning "West Coast" offense that would soon rule the sport.
"That's what I was the first six years of my career. Bill Walsh split me out a lot of the time," Trumpy said in a 2008 Bengals.com story.
Trumpy still has more touchdowns (35) and yards per catch (15.4) than the Bengals tight ends that have come after him. From 1968-74, only Jerry Smith had more touchdowns, and only Rich Caster had a longer yards per catch than Trumpy among NFL tight ends.
"He was a matchup nightmare," Lapham said once. "He was too quick for linebackers. Too big for safeties. Tough. Reliable. And he was an underrated blocker. He was a good one."
He befuddled secondaries deep with a Paul Brown staple, the double pass, and Dolphins head coach Don Shula never let him forget it.
Trumpy always enjoyed recalling how in his last season in a November driving rain at Riverfront Stadium, he caught a double-flanker reverse pass from 29 yards to beat Miami and help knock them out of the 1977 playoffs.
"For 10 to 15 years after that, whenever Shula would see me, he would swear and shake his head and say, 'Trumpy, the rain and that (bleep) double pass,'" Trumpy once recalled.
As rich as his playing career, Trumpy became a media role model for current day voices such Lapham and an heir to his "Sports Talk" program, Lance McAlister, decades after he grew up on an Illinois farm inspired by the baseball calls of Jack Brickhouse in Chicago and Harry Caray in St. Louis.
"If it wasn't for guys like Trump or Marty Brennaman, I wouldn't be here today,' McAlister said in 2014. "Listening to a guy like that (inspired) me."
His most memorable moments came covering golf, and he once revealed how he felt during the United States' Ryder Cup win in England at The Belfry in 1993.
Trumpy found himself on the 15th fairway with American Raymond Floyd when they heard a sudden, sustained roar from the par-3 14th.
"Raymond came running over to me and said, 'Who was up first? Who was up first?' I told him, '(Nick) Faldo,''' Trumpy said. "Raymond said, 'It was a hole-in-one, wasn't it?' It was. I can still feel the chills. Just the fact that he was so into it, and I was the one telling him what happened."
As usual, Trumpy came up with just the right words to sum up his own life lived so well.
