Woody Durham elected to NSMA Hall of Fame
Durham is best known for the 40 years he spent as radio play-by-play announcer for University of North Carolina football and basketball.
Woody Durham is among four honorees elected to the National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame, the organization announced on Tuesday.
Durham, the longtime “Voice of the Tar Heels,” will join Thomas Boswell, Bryant Gumbel and Dick Weiss and be inducted this June, NSMA executive director Dave Goren announced. Goren also said that NSMA members voted 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 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
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.
Boswell is one of the pre-eminent baseball writers in the country, having served as a longtime Washington Post sports columnist. 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.
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.