Chris Stewart Sports

By Chris Stewart

I walked into Coleman Coliseum at 8:45 a.m. yesterday, as I do almost every Sunday morning during the college basketball season.

That’s when we would tape Mark Gottfried’s television show, a program I started hosting with him last year.

Mark was standing in the hallway outside the team’s locker room (which is where we tape it) when I walked up. He greeted me as he usually does – “What’s up, Voice?” - a nickname he gave me seven years ago when I started doing play-by-play for men’s basketball.

I said, “I’m good. How are you?”

Mark replied, “I’m good.”

I said, “No. Forget basketball. How are YOU doing?”

There was only a slight hesitation before he said, “I’m fine.”

I knew better.

“You know, it’s just so tough, when momentum starts to turn the other way, to turn it back around,” Gottfried said. “But it’s nothing that winning a couple of games won’t fix.”

Again, I knew better. And I think deep down, Mark did, too.

This is not a column where I will debate Gottfried’s departure – whether it came too soon, or too late. Nor is it one where I will run through his resume and positive accomplishments. There are many other forums for both of those subjects.

This is simply to shed a little light on my personal and professional experience with Mark Gottfried at the end of his tenure, as well as a couple of fond memories at the beginning of mine.

Of course, the promise of that season was never fulfilled, and things began to spiral downward.

Friends and acquaintances have quizzed me many times since then, basically saying, “Man, your job must be tough these days?”

Now, if you know me at all, or you’ve ever heard me call an Alabama game, you know that I am not only a broadcaster for the Crimson Tide Sports Network, but I am also a life-long fan. I hate losing in anything, especially when it involves the Crimson Tide. So, from that perspective, it hasn’t been a lot of fun at times.

However, DOING my job was not difficult at all. The thanks for that goes to Mark Gottfried.

Quite often, when someone’s world is caving in around them, they tend to make the lives of everyone around them miserable. Not once over the past two-and-a-half years – or at any other point in my time working with him - did Mark ever make my job uncomfortable.

There were times when he may not have been as talkative, and didn’t hang around for small talk or more in-depth discussion about his team- although those were rare. Yet he never made me dread doing an interview with him on TV or radio, because I knew Mark would deal with me professionally.

I was also extremely thankful when Mark would reach out to me on a personal level, such as my first road trip with his team seven years ago. It would be my first game as Alabama’s play-by-play announcer, and I was also in New York City for the first time in my life.

Mark called my room that first morning of the trip and invited me to go down to see Ground Zero with him. We stopped at a typical New York coffee stand and each got a large cup (Mark bought, as usual), then hailed a cab down to the site where the Twin Towers once stood.

While I’ll always remember the site of that emptiness in the middle of Manhattan, my most enduring memory is that Mark invited me to join him to begin with.

He didn’t have to invite me, but he did. It would be the first of many times we would take road trips over the years where he would include me as part of the “team” or the “family”.

Another such occasion took place about three years ago, the summer after Alabama won the 2005 SEC Western Division title. I received a call from his secretary saying that Mark wanted me to stop by his office the next time I was in Tuscaloosa.

I came by the next day, walked in his office, and he said, “I’ve got something for you.”

He then handed me a beautiful SEC Western Division Championship ring, just like his players and staff received.

Again, while it is not at all uncommon for coaches to share those type things with their announcers (Jim Wells was just as generous the following year when his baseball team won the SEC crown), the fact that he wanted to give it to me personally is what meant the most.

As we wrapped up what would be the final “Mark Gottfried Show” yesterday (although I had been given no indication it was at the time), I walked out of the locker room with him, and into the same hallway where our conversation had started.

“Hey Dillon, let’s go.”

Dillon is among the youngest of Gottfried’s five children, and the one who would join his father every Sunday for the taping of the show. Their route to Coleman Coliseum on those mornings always included a stop by Krispy Kreme. Coach G would make his way into the locker room to tape the show, while Dillon would run off somewhere in the coliseum to entertain himself (and if you know Dillon, you know there is NO TELLING what he was up to during those 30 minutes).

When the boy walked up to him, Mark lovingly put his arm around his son’s neck and kissed him on top of the head. “Come on, let’s go get a workout in. You want to?”

With that, they headed down one end of the hallway, while I went the other.

There’s plenty of time to look ahead, and plenty of other people discussing what led us to Coach Gottfried’s departure.

Today, I’m just thankful for six-and-a-half years of working with a guy that treated me as a professional and as a friend.

And I’m thankful that the last image I have of Mark Gottfried as head coach at Alabama, is one of him sharing a Father-Son moment that will likely grow more meaningful to them both over the years.