Sports broadcaster Jim Nantz on his deep NC roots and the origin story of ‘Hello friends’

You may know that Jim Nantz is one of the most famous sports broadcasters in America. Since being hired by CBS Sports in 1985 at age 26, he’s become a 5-time national sportscaster of the year and has provided the play-by-play soundtrack for many of the most iconic moments in sports. Nantz has called multiple Super Bowls, Final Fours and the Masters — sometimes in the same nine-week span.

What you may not know is the depth of Nantz’s North Carolina roots. Nantz, 65, not only was born in Charlotte, but both his mom’s and dad’s families are deeply embedded in our state. Nantz was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 2024. Every time he calls a golf tournament at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, he talks about coming home.

For his “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” interview, Nantz sat down with us in Greensboro, where he was broadcasting a golf tournament. We spoke about his family, the time he called a Super Bowl featuring the Carolina Panthers and the origin story as to why he opens every telecast with the phrase “Hello friends.”

This conversation is also available in a fuller form on our “Sports Legends” podcast — highly recommended in this case, given the familiarity of Nantz’s on-air voice. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Scott Fowler: Can you explain your North Carolina connections?

Jim Nantz: All my family is from the Charlotte area. My dad’s family, the Nantz family, hails from Gaston County, and specifically from Mount Holly, where my grandfather, Jim Nantz Sr. — I’m the third — was the local postmaster in Mount Holly.

In a little town like Mount Holly, the postmaster knows every citizen in town and is one of the most popular figures in town and one of the most trusted. That was my grandfather’s role.

Parenthetically, he played basketball with College of Charleston, before there was an NCAA Tournament, back in the late 1920s, and was two-time captain of that College of Charleston basketball team that advanced to what was then a version of the Final Four in Chicago. And he was a gifted athlete who also was a baseball player and played in the New York Giants farm system as a pitcher before he threw his arm out. He ended up settling in Mount Holly, where my dad was born and raised.

My dad went to Mount Holly High School and later migrated to Greensboro, where he was a two-sport star for Guilford in both football and basketball. When my dad played his first game in football, in 1945, it was Guilford at Maryland in College Park, Maryland. The head coach for the Terrapins that day was a coach named Bear Bryant. My dad was 16 years old at the time. Guilford got shellacked, but he was there for Bear Bryant’s first career win.

SF: And your mom’s side of the family?

JN: It comes from more of the central part of what we know Charlotte to be today. My grandfather on that side was a World War I veteran, and he came back and raised four kids on Camp Greene Street in Charlotte. He proudly worked for Sunbeam Bakery and drove a bread truck. My grandparents lived in that house for 63 years. And they raised four kids in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house.

My mom was this beautiful lady. She was Miss Charlotte once, and then runner-up to Miss North Carolina. She went to Harding High School.

My parents met in Charlotte on a blind date. They’re both gone now and have taken up residence in the Old Town Cemetery, in Mount Holly. She was Doris. My dad was Jim Jr.

And that’s the family story. We hail from Charlotte and Mount Holly, and we’re proud of it.

SF: And you were born in Charlotte?

JN: I was, and I lived there for six years. We lived originally off of Albemarle Road, and eventually we moved off of Providence Road. I went to Lansdowne Elementary in my early years. And then my dad got transferred to New Orleans, later to the Bay Area in California and ultimately to New Jersey, where we lived during my high school years.

SF: You wrote a book about your dad called “Always By My Side,” which I’ve read and highly recommend. Tell me a little bit about your relationship with your father.

JN: It was as close as a father and son could be. My father was my hero, my inspiration and my best friend, and he suffered for 13 years with Alzheimer’s disease. It was really difficult. ... He was a life-of-a-party kind of a guy: Big, robust, strong, athletic, in shape.

But at 66 he suffered a mini-stroke while he was attending a golf tournament I was broadcasting in Fort Worth. ... And he was never the same after that. 1995. He passed in ‘08.

SF: In your book, you wrote that your father had once played semi-pro football for the Charlotte Clippers (starting in the late 1940s). Do you think that football triggered or accelerated his Alzheimer’s?

JN: I actually do. My dad played in the leather helmet era with no face mask, and he always battled hearing loss. He was deaf in one ear, and it came from a football injury rushing a punter. He went in to block the punt, and the punter’s leg extended and hit him in the head by the ear and burst an eardrum. Alas, he lost hearing.

So it was always problematic, my dad just being able to stay up with a conversation. But I don’t have any doubt that there was concussion-related dementia. We all know that the game has taken great strides to try to make it safer. My dad’s days were really unsafe.

SF: The story of why you say “Hello friends” when you first come on the air has to do with your family. Can you tell that one?

JN: Well, “Hello friends” is something I open up every broadcast with, when they come to us on camera. And it really was born out of just trying to connect with my dad as his memory was slipping. It’s not some cheesy line trying to draw attention to myself. That’s the last thing I ever wanted.

But in 2002 I was by his bedside, and he had faint recognition of anything. I was always playing tricks to try to keep the engines churning inside of his head.

And when I left one day in 2002 I said, “Dad, this weekend, when I’m on the air, I’m going to be in Minnesota at Hazeltine, calling the PGA Championship. I’m gonna look at that camera and I’m going to say your name: Jim Nantz. But I’m going to first say, ‘Hello friends’ because you have nothing but friends. So that you know when I say, “Hello friends,” I’m thinking of you at that moment.”

So I looked into that lens that day and said, “Hello friends. Jim Nantz here. Welcome to The PGA Championship.” Didn’t think anything of it.

The show ended. I got a call from one of my CBS colleagues who doesn’t work golf, and he said, “Hey, I heard you say, ‘Hello friends.’ What was that about?” Told him the back story. He said, “That sounds like you. You ought to do that every show.” So I kept doing it.

I’m anxious until I get on the air now, even after all these years. But when I say “Hello friends” — and my dad’s been gone a long time — I still, for a flicker of a second,see an image of him. And it calms me, and I’m able to kind of move into the broadcast.

So it’s been around enough now that people know that’s kind of a common line of mine. And it’s not an attempt to do anything other than to try to remember and honor my father.

Also, as a tribute, we’re trying to eradicate Alzheimer’s disease and be a part of a team that somehow finds a way to treat and ultimately cure the opponent that defeated my dad. And it’s been a great year, I might add, worldwide, in new drugs and trials that have come through. Many of those we have helped run and administer at the Nantz National Alzheimer Center in Houston.

SF: Another of your signature lines is “A tradition unlike any other,” in reference to the Masters. Augusta National has trademarked that one.

JN: And I’ve trademarked “Hello friends.” I did that because a lot of people were producing “Hello friends” material. It’s not because I wanted the money for that or to monetize it.

I just didn’t like some of the things that I saw that were online that people were attaching to it and saying, “Hello friends.” I didn’t like “Hello friends” showing up on toasters or things that didn’t seem befitting of a Masters broadcast. So I have the rights to “Hello friends.”

So you said it earlier, and now you owe me 10 bucks (laughs).

SF: You worked the Final Four and other college basketball games for years with another North Carolina legend — the late Billy Packer. What was that like?

JN: He really, truly was the voice of college basketball longer than anyone. With all due respect to all the other voices out there — Dick Vitale, Billy Raftery, who was a partner of mine — Billy did the Final Four longer and the NCAA Tournament longer than anyone. And he represented ACC basketball and North Carolina exceedingly well. I’m still kind of in disbelief that he’s gone. It doesn’t feel real to me. He and his wife, Barbara, passed away within a year of one another. Their kids are dear friends.

I love Billy Packer. I used to love watching the ACC and see Billy those ACC network games with Jim Thacker on the C.D. Chesley production.

Scott: How did you see that in New Jersey?

JN: There was an affiliate in Philadelphia that ran the package. New York did not take the ACC package, but a station in Philly did. And this was pre-cable. You had those unsightly antennas that were either inside of your attic or on top of your roof.

Ours was inside an attic. And when I somehow discovered there was going to be a Billy Packer game on, I would go up in the attic and I would turn it around. Instead of it pointing toward New York, it’d point it toward Philadelphia, and I’d see the games.

The interesting thing about Billy was that the folks inside the ACC thought he had something against him, that he wasn’t pro-ACC enough. The entire rest of the nation thought he was “Mr. ACC.” On top of it, here he was a star player who helped take Wake to the Final Four in the ‘60s. Wake thought he was a sellout to North Carolina and Duke and State. N.C. State thought he favored everybody else. Duke thought he was pro-Carolina. Carolina thought he was pro-Duke.

Everywhere you would go, someone thought he had it in for them. And the truth is he didn’t have it in for anybody. He was just calling the games objectively, and he loved a good debate. There could be any subject matter, and he would say, “You pick a side, I’ll take the other side. Let’s debate.” He was one of the great characters I’ve ever been around in my life.

SF: A mutual friend of ours, Sam Farmer of the L.A. Times, told me to ask you about a coin you carried that had something to do with Pat Summerall.

JN: It’s a sobriety coin. Pat Summerall was a great mentor. We worked together for 10 years, being on the CBS golf team together, and I served as his understudy.

I loved Pat Summerall. And he battled alcoholism until 1992. The day after the ‘92 Masters, there was an intervention awaiting Pat, and he went to the Betty Ford Center and changed his life. And he spent the last 21 years of his life not only sober, but helping thousands of other people to change their lives. And I got one of his sobriety coins. Whenever I call a Super Bowl, I take that coin and I put it right here in my left inside left breast pocket, so it’s right next to my heart. So he’s right there.

SF: You were the play-by-play broadcaster of the Carolina Panthers’ last Super Bowl appearance — Super Bowl 50. What do you remember about that game?

JN: Denver’s defense made a statement early on, with the strip-sack and the fumble recovery for the touchdown. I think put them in a bit of shock. And Cam had had that MVP year.

And I think all the buildup and all the things that are required of you the week of the Super Bowl were draining to him. He didn’t have his best game. Peyton (Manning, Denver’s quarterback) didn’t play great either, but he led.

The thing I remember about the game was that my son was born six days before it, and I was on such a high. I was living in Pebble Beach, California, at that time, which went on full time for about 10 years. Now I’m there for three months a year and nine months a year in Nashville. I was just so thrilled to be a dad again and to have my first son.

SF: Panthers fans remember that game partly due to a fumble that Cam Newton didn’t jump on.

JN: The fumble: The ball was just kind of sitting there. It felt like it anyway. We replayed it over and over again.

I was working with Phil Simms, and he did a fantastic job talking about how he thought that Cam should have reacted quicker and jumped in there a little sooner.

SF: You’ve broadcast 39 Masters golf tournaments now. How many do you want to do?

JN: I’d like to get to 51. It used to be 50. But (legendary announcer) Jack Whitaker once told me: “I think you need to get to 51. If you do the math on it, your 51st would be the 100th playing of the Masters. I think you need to be there for that Masters, and Augusta needs you to be there.” That was one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

That would be 2036.

SF: You’ve already looked ahead?

JN: I couldn’t help it.

The “Sports Legends” series has won multiple national awards and includes 1-on-1 interviews with guests like Richard Petty, Steph Curry, Roy Williams, Mike Krzyzewski, Jake Delhomme, Jay Bilas, Alonzo Mourning and Dawn Staley. Those are also available on the “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” podcast , where a fuller version of this Jerry Moore interview can also be found.

The “Sports Legends” coffee-table book is now available at Sp ortsLegendsBook.com and at local bookstores.

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