NSMA ELECTS BUCK, KREMER, STARK, McCARVER, KAHN ELECTED TO HALL OF FAME; HARLAN, PASSAN WIN NATIONAL AWARDS

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (January 9, 2024) – Sportscasters Joe Buck and Andrea Kremer, and sportswriter Jayson Stark have been voted into the National Sports Media Association’s Hall of Fame, NSMA executive director Dave Goren announced. They’ll be joined by posthumous selections Tim McCarver and Roger Kahn. The five were the leading vote-getters in balloting by NSMA members during December.

Kevin Harlan of CBS, Westwood One, and Turner was voted the 2023 National Sportscaster of the Year, while ESPN’s Jeff Passan was voted the 2023 National Sportswriter of the Year. It’s Harlan’s third National win, Passan’s second.

The NSMA will honor its award winners and Hall of Fame inductees during the organization’s 64th awards weekend and national convention, to be held this summer in North Carolina.

Buck is finishing his second season at ESPN where he is the play-by-play voice of Monday Night Football. In more than three decades behind the microphone, he has called 24 World Series, six Super Bowls, five U. S. Open golf tournaments, 17 seasons of St. Louis Cardinals baseball, and hundreds of other events. The son of NSMA Hall of Famer Jack Buck, Joe is a four-time NSMA National Sportscaster of the Year.

Currently the chief correspondent for the NFL Network, Kremer has made her mark on several platforms. Recognized by the Pro Football Hall of Fame with the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award in 2018, Kremer just finished a 17-year award-winning run at HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel. She helped the CBS Sports Network launch We Need to Talk, the first all-female nationally-televised weekly show, and she was the first woman to become a full-time NFL game analyst, working alongside Hannah Storm on Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football package. After beginning her career as NFL Films’ first female producer, Kremer became ESPN’s first female correspondent (1989-2006), before moving to NBC Sports (2006-2012), where she worked on Sunday Night Football and the Olympics. Kremer has won eight Emmy Awards, multiple Gracies, and a Peabody Award.

Stark began his career at the Providence Journal before moving to his hometown Philadelphia Inquirer. For 20 years at the Inquirer, he built his reputation on the Phillies and MLB beats, before becoming a columnist. He moved to ESPN in 2000, writing for ESPN.com and appearing regularly on the network’s baseball shows. In 2018, Stark took his baseball writing prowess to The Athletic. In 2019, he was named the Career Excellence Award winner by the Baseball Writers Association of America.

McCarver turned a 21-year, All-Star major league baseball career into a 40-plus-year announcing career as a color commentator on television. After retiring from playing in 1980, McCarver began on local television as an analyst on Phillies broadcasts, while also getting his network start at NBC. He called 24 World Series for CBS, ABC, and FOX, leaving the network booth after the 2013 World Series. He continued doing select St. Louis Cardinals games until retiring after the 2022 season. McCarver died on February 16, 2023.

Kahn started his career at the New York Herald Tribune, where he covered the Brooklyn Dodgers beat, among others. That experience led him to write Boys of Summer, a comprehensive look at the Dodgers teams of the early 1950s. Kahn went on to write 19 other books. He died in February 2020.

Harlan has been a fixture in sports fans’ living rooms for the last quarter century. He has called the NFL on CBS since 1998, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament on CBS since 1999, Monday Night Football on Westwood One, and NBA action for Turner since the 1997-98 season. Harlan also won the NSMA’s National Sportscaster of the Year Award in 2017 and 2019, thus becoming the 12^th person to win the award at least three times.

Passan becomes the 11^th person to win more than one National Sportswriter of the Year Award, having also won it in 2021. ESPN’s Senior MLB Insider has worked for the network since 2019, writing for ESPN.com and appearing on several of ESPN’s studio shows. Passan won the 2022 Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting. Before ESPN, he spent 13 years at Yahoo Sports.

The NSMA will release the list of 2023 state sportscasters and sportswriters of the year on January 16 at 2:00 P.M. EST.

About the National Sports Media Association

The National Sports Media Association, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, that seeks to develop educational opportunities for those who are interested in pursuing a career in sports media, through networking, interning, mentoring, and scholarship programs.

The NSMA also honors, preserves, and celebrates the diverse legacy of sports media in the United States.

Founded in 1959 as the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association in Salisbury, N.C., the NSSA added its Hall of Fame in 1962, with Grantland Rice as its first member. The organization rebranded to the National Sports Media Association in 2016 and moved to Winston-Salem, N.C. one year later.

For sponsorship and membership information, contact Dave Goren at dgoren@nationalsportsmedia.org.