Craig Graham Sager was an American sports reporter who covered an array of sports for CNN and its sister stations TBS and TNT, from 1981 until his death in late 2016.
32 Facts About Craig Sager
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Craig Sager was a 2016 inductee of the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame.
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Craig Sager 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.
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Craig Sager was a 1973 graduate of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where he earned a bachelor's degree in Speech.
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Craig Sager was a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity.
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Craig Sager began his career as a reporter for WXLT in Sarasota, Florida.
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Craig Sager worked as a radio news director in 1974, making $95 a week for his efforts, a paltry sum which was supplemented by his access to sports events.
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Craig Sager was in Atlanta and dodged security to be on the field on April 8,1974, when slugger Hank Aaron hit his record-breaking 715th home run, brashly seeking to interview the superstar at home plate amidst mass fan pandemonium.
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In 1978, Craig Sager joined KMBC-Channel 9 in Kansas City, Missouri, where he broadcast Kansas City Royals spring training games and Kansas City Chiefs preseason games during the 1970s.
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Craig Sager handled the first live remote report by CNN from the 1980 baseball playoffs and joined the network full-time in 1981.
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Craig Sager served as the anchor of College Football Scoreboard on CNN's sports-oriented sister network, TBS, from 1982 to 1985.
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In 1987, Craig Sager moved to work full-time at the TBS division, hosting a 30-minute Sunday night program called The Coors Sports Page as well as handling halftime reports of Atlanta Hawks games.
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Craig Sager was posted wherever the network needed him, working before the cameras at Ted Turner's Goodwill Games from 1986 through 2001.
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Craig Sager covered the Pan American Games and the 1990 FIFA World Cup.
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Craig Sager called Nordic skiing and curling for sister network TNT's coverage of the 1992 Winter Olympics.
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Craig Sager worked on telecasts of golf and tennis, and covered the National Football League on TNT's telecasts from 1990 to 1997.
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Craig Sager's best known televised role was sideline reporter for NBA on TNT, for which he received his first Sports Emmy Award nomination in 2012.
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One reporter investigating Craig Sager's accumulated wardrobe stored within the jocular interviewer's home tallied 137 jackets before giving up, without even counting the garments contained in other closets scattered throughout the house.
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Craig Sager served as a sideline reporter for the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, both for Turner Sports and CBS with Marv Albert, Chris Webber, and Len Elmore.
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In 1999, Craig Sager was loaned to NBC Sports to work as a field reporter for both NBC's coverage of the National League Championship Series and World Series.
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Craig Sager was the men's and women's basketball reporter for NBC's Olympic coverage since the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
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Craig Sager served as a reporter for NBC Sports' coverage of basketball at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
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Craig Sager partnered with NBA on ESPN regular Doris Burke to work the sidelines of Game 6 of the 2016 NBA Finals.
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On July 13,2016, Craig Sager was awarded the Jimmy V Perseverance Award at the 2016 ESPY Awards show for battling cancer, which was his final public appearance.
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On December 13,2016, Craig Sager was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame just two days before his death.
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At the 2017 NBA All-Star Game, Craig Sager was named the winner of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame's 2017 Curt Gowdy Media Award.
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In late March 2015, Craig Sager announced that his leukemia had returned.
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Craig Sager ultimately endured the process for a third time through the gift of marrow from an anonymous donor.
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Craig Sager was memorialized during that evening's broadcast of a game between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Chicago Bulls on the Inside the NBA pregame show, with players of each team wearing tribute T-shirts during warmups designed to look like one of Sager's signature gaudy suits.
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Craig Sager and Issel were friends and basketball teammates at Batavia High School, when Craig Sager was a freshman and Issel a senior.
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Craig Sager's son, Craig II, was a walk-on wide receiver at the University of Georgia.
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Craig Sager II filled in as a sideline reporter during his father's absence in 2014, and is the managing editor for ScoreATL, which covers Georgia high school sports.