Today we launched our new sports site The Comeback, which is the general sports version of Awful Announcing.  As AA has grown over these past nine years and developed its own unique voice in the sports world, the powers that be have decided it’s time for us to have our own fancy new spinoff.  Think of it as more Frasier and less Joey.

But don’t worry, we’ll still be here covering all the foibles of the sports media world, but because we’re contractually obligated to do as much cross-promotion as humanly possible (eat your heart out ESPN and your “family” of networks) we’ve picked out the launch date of The Comeback to commemorate some of the biggest comebacks in the sports media world.  All of these people came back from *something*, but those circumstances are of course wildly different.

Here they are, in alphabetical order…

Marv Albert

Marv Albert always has been and always will be the voice of basketball… but there was one stretch in the late 90’s where Albert’s name was disgraced after…. well, you know. Albert was fired in 1997 by NBC after his escapades became public but was re-hired by the peacock in 1999.  Ever since, Albert has been back at the top of the industry calling Monday Night Football for Westwood One, the NFL and NCAA Tournament for CBS, and being the NBA’s lead voice on TNT.  Almost twenty years ago, you would have had long odds on that ever happening.

Keith Olbermann

Ah yes, the napalmer of bridges himself.  The fear and loathing of Keith Olbermann at ESPN was legendary.  The one sports media comeback that would never happen would be Olbermann’s return to Bristol.  Not after all the hard feelings and all that had been written and said, right?  Well, anything truly is possible.  The prodigal son returned home in 2013 to host his own eponymous show safely away from Bristol and it was a great success.  Olbermann found his niche offering relevant sports commentary with the occasional dust-up now and again.  But Olbermann’s acclaimed criticism of Roger Goodell also made it a short-lived stay with ESPN for his return.  After two years, ESPN did not renew his contract, and maybe his strong anti-Goodell commentary had something to do with it.  Nevertheless, these two are clearly better together than they are apart, so hopefully there’s another comeback in the future.

Craig Sager & Shelley Smith 

As far as heartwarming comebacks go, it doesn’t get any better than seeing Craig Sager and Shelley Smith back on television.  Sager’s ongoing battle with leukemia has been an inspiration to many as he has returned to the TNT sidelines to begin the 2015 season.  Smith came back to ESPN airwaves at the 2015 NFL Draft after a bout with breast cancer.  Both are two great comeback stories that show the best of what the industry is about.

Stephen A. Smith

In 2009, Stephen A. Smith was a vagabond carnival barker without a home.  After rising from the local scene in Philadelphia, to being a contributor to the Best Damn Sports Show, Period (personal confession: I was actually a huge fan of SAS back in those days before he developed his very loud television persona), Smith had arrived at ESPN with his own talk show, Quite Frankly.  However, ESPN and Smith “decided to move in different directions” in 2009 after his show was canceled in 2007 after an 18 month run.  But in 2012 something truly extraordinary happened – Stephen A. Smith found his sports debating soulmate, the Ronny to his Nancy, the Sonny to his Cher, the Ringo to his rest of the Beatles… Skip Bayless.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Smith and Bayless have been a tour de force of awfulness ever since, so this is one comeback we would have all been better off without.

Bill Walton

We end our list with one of our absolute favorite announcers – the big redhead.  In 2015, Walton said this to Sports Illustrated, chronicling his comeback from major back surgery in 2009:

“When you are in unrelenting, excruciating and debilitating pain that never goes away for years on end, your life is over,” Walton said at the time. “You go through the stages of thinking you are going to die to wanting to die to the worst possible stage of all which is: I’m going to live and this is what I’m stuck with. But I got better and it is amazing what they have been able to do for me. I can think. I can sleep. I can move. I can ride my bike. I can dream.”

Before the surgery, Walton was one of the top NBA analysts in the sport with his exceptional and eccentric style marking him as one of the most unique voices in broadcasting.  After coming back to ESPN and calling Pac 12 college basketball in 2012, Walton has a new lease on life that is apparent in his announcing.  Bill Walton is maybe the only person where you can listen to him call a game and say that it’s an experience.  But because Walton is such a one-of-a-kind personality, you can lose yourself in his talking about bears or The Grateful Dead or Chinese history or volcanoes and be ok with the fact that he’s not breaking down all the nuances of the 2-3 zone.  If Walton’s partnership with Dave Pasch doesn’t become a reality show, then it’s the biggest travesty of justice in the history of western civilization.