Jim Nantz Chooses Kindness In an Angel Reese vs. Caitlin Clark Manufactured Controversy World — The Real Reason Houston’s National Icon Is So Beloved

Jim Nantz always chooses kindness. If you’re wondering what sets this Houston proud broadcaster apart aside from Nantz’s ability to always find the right words and perfectly frame sports’ biggest moments, if you’re unsure what makes him beloved in a different way (often a more personal way) than even other great TV voices, this is where you should start. For in a world where the most watched women’s basketball game ever gets turned into a talking points war over whether Angel Reese, a light-up-the-room talent and personality, disrespected Caitlin Clark, the next incarnation of Steph Curry, there often seems like there’s no hope for the good stuff.

The sweet stuff. The stories that have made sports fascinate people long before the age of billion dollar TV deals. But Jim Nantz always remembers that stuff. He remembers to be kind.

And as Nantz signed off from the Final Four for the last time at NRG Stadium, doing it in just four miles from the Houston house he grew up in at Old Spanish Trail off of Wheeler, that’s the message he chose to leave America with.

“I just said if there’s anything I learned from this, in my 37 years, is that everybody has a dream,” Nantz says. “And everybody has a story. Sometimes we all ought to make an effort to find out what other people’s story really is.

“To be kind.”

A Jim Nantz broadcast is almost always kind. Maybe that’s a quaint notion to some. Maybe that’s why the cynics of the world have never really gotten Nantz. But it is also what helps set him completely apart, what makes him such an enduring voice in a profession where so many others fade away.

Usually Nantz flies right to Augusta for The Masters on the night of college basketball’s national championship game. A few hours after the broadcast, he’s in the air and usually in a bed in Georgia by 3 or 4 am. Nantz decided to stick around Houston after this Final Four though, to soak in the finish of his amazing 32-year run with some of the people who mean so much to him. To spend the night and try and share his own gratitude.

University of Houston coach Kelvin Sampson attended this national championship game in a suit, something he doesn’t even wear on the sidelines while coaching, for a reason. Nantz drew a lot of people to NRG Stadium, which isn’t something a broadcaster is supposed to be able to do.

Then again, Nantz has never been just another TV voice.

“The well wishers that came out have been a big part of my life,” Nantz says, standing on the Houston Final Four court that’s covered in gold confetti. “Teachers, fellow colleagues, fellow broadcasters, people here in Houston, my roommates — all of them, Blaine (McCallister), Freddie (Couples) — my golf teammates. All of them.

“Tony Romo. The Coach Ks of the world. . . I felt a lot of love.”

Part of that is the authentic joy Jim Nantz brings to any event he broadcasts. Nantz never sounds like it’s just another game. He always seems genuinely happy to be there. Energized by the prospect of telling someone’s story.

In many ways, the NCAA Tournament brought out the best in Nantz. It provided an ever-changing stage for him to tell so many unique stories. With many of those stories about dreamers, Nantz’s favorite kind of tales.

“We had an opening that was about dreamers,” Nantz says of his last Final Four broadcast. “I’ve always believed that the NCAA Tournament is about heart maybe more than any other sporting event, There’s something that galvanizes the country about the NCAA Tournament.

“That touches all these emotional cords. That’s what I feel. And that’s what I tried to transmit over 30 years. This feel good nature of the tournament. The tournament feels good. That’s real. There’s something about it that’s joyful.”

Jim Nantz and The Dreamers

Jim Nantz’s father — Jim Nantz Jr. — was a dreamer and someone else who almost always chose kindness and joy. Having an event for the Nantz National Alzheimer Center at Houston Methodist Hospital — a center started in homage to Nantz’s dad — during this Houston Final Four made sense from a logistical standpoint.

But the inner feelings impact of it definitely hit Nantz hard, especially coming just hours before his last Final Four game.

“Today was a tough day,” Nantz says of that last Championship Monday. “I felt like. . . everything I’ve felt, I haven’t felt this way in a long time. I was emotional. We had an event at the Nantz National Alzheimer Center named for my father. It tore me up pretty good.

“I went back to my room mid afternoon and knew I needed about two hours just to myself to just kind of gather myself. I felt my emotions were right there at a tipping point.”

Ever the professional, Jim Nantz made the game broadcast about the game — and UConn cementing its standing among college basketball’s true all-time blue blood programs — staying away from anything about himself. He wouldn’t make it personal until after the NCAA Championship trophy had been handed out.

“Thank you for being my friend,” being Jim Nantz’s final words on a college basketball broadcast may have been perfect. But for Nantz, the real perfect moment seemed to be standing in the middle of the NRG Stadium court, watching the signature season capping One Shinning Moment montage play on the giant stadium scoreboard screen, arm in arm with his oldest daughter Caroline.

Caroline Nantz attended her first Final Four as an 11 month old baby in Seattle in 1995. As she got older, watching One Shining Moment with her dad became a father-daughter tradition.

Nantz isn’t retiring or stepping away from the games he loves. He’ll still be the voice of NFL football and golf, including The Masters this week, on CBS.

“I really knew I could do this for a lot longer if I wanted to,” Nantz says. “I’m physically able to do it. It’s just you get to a point where you reevaluate your life and how you’re allocating your time.

“And I don’t want to minimize everything about the NCAA Tournament and college basketball. I have. . . I’m hopelessly in love with it and it’s a love affair that will take me all the way to my grave.”

Nantz tells PaperCity that he hopes to be in the stands at State Farm Stadium outside of Phoenix watched his beloved Houston Cougars play in the 2024 Final Four. The conscience of college basketball is certainly not retiring from being a devoted UH fan and Kelvin Sampson believer. Houston, the city, will forever be Jim Nantz’s city in so many ways.

“It’s a melting pot of dreamers,” Nantz says of the nation’s fourth largest city. “We’ve had people from all over the world come here. We’re as international a city as you’ll find in this country. And we have a place for everybody.

“And I’m proud of that. I’m proud of what our school represents. What our school looks like. The people who have found their way to the University of Houston and have been given a chance to chase their dream. All of that’s brewing inside of me.”

“I just said if there’s anything I learned from this, in my 37 years, is that everybody has a dream. And everybody has a story. Sometimes we all ought to make an effort to find out what other people’s story really is. To be kind.” — Jim Nantz

For Nantz, it’s all about the good. His instinct never would be to try to turn someone like Angel Reese into some kind of cartoon villain which completely overlooks who she actually is. Jim Nantz goes towards kindness.

It’s why the love is genuine in his Final Four swan song in Houston. It’s why people like Tracy Wolfson who work with him are giddy — genuinely giddy — about having their press credential autographed by Nantz. This doesn’t happen with all multi-million dollar TV broadcasters. On what’s his night in many ways, his last night calling the Final Four, Nantz puts his arms on two Houston reporters shoulders to make sure they can hear as a scrum crowds around him. He thanks guys like Mark Berman of Fox 26 and Matt Musil of KHOU, who were in Houston when he was a young broadcaster, personally.

Jim Nantz is a one of a kind. And Houston is lucky that he’s so eager to claim it as his city, his home. Sometimes kindness wins it all.