The DUMBEST NFL Announcer Moment in NBC HISTORY | Reggie Rucker

live nfl trivia every wednesday night on twitch at 9 pm eastern come show off your football knowledge for a chance to win cash prizes check the link in the description to find out more and now on with our feature presentation one of the most important things that any announcer has to do in order to resonate with the viewer is establish credibility in a nutshell it means you have to sound like you know what you're talking about if you say that the linebacker blew the coverage when he really didn't and when he actually performed his assignment perfectly or if you say that a player is having a good season when anyone who follows the team closely knows that he isn't in a snap the viewing audience will turn on you they won't trust anywhere that you say from that point on because you've lost that credibility and you've got something emphatically wrong that could have been disproven fairly easily if you knew what you were doing and speaking of losing credibility that's exactly what happened to one nfl announcer working for nbc in the 1980s this is reggie rucker and in the blink of an eye he went from a rising star in the industry and someone who was working his way up the ranks on the announcer depth chart to a man remembered for an infamous statement on the air as well man whose career never recovered on paper it seemed like a silly white lie but in actuality it destroyed his reputation forever and this is the story behind one of the worst announcing moments in nfl history on nbc before i talk about the moment in question made some context to understand who the announcer is and why his comments cause such an uproar in the first place and to fully understand who reggie rucker is we have to talk about what he was doing before he was a collar commentator in the nfl like most color commentators rucker began his career as a player even though rucker was undrafted out of boston university he found his way into the league and had an incredibly solid career lasting more than a decade while he bounced around the cowboys and giants to start off it was in new england as a member of the patriots that he would find his footing during the 1973 season he was one of the best receivers in the afc finishing with 53 receptions which ranked 6 in the nfl and 3rd in the conference and 743 receiving yards which ranked 8th in the nfl and 3rd in the conference in fact during the 1973 season if you looked at every player in the afc with at least 50 receptions and 700 receiving yards rucker is the only player that meets those criteria eventually rucker would find his way onto the cleveland browns in 1975 and would place seven seasons there while with cleveland he was an instrumental part of the team's offense particularly during the 1980 season when quarterback ryan site won mvp and guided the team to the post season sipe loved throwing to rucker as that year rucker finished second on the team with 52 receptions and 768 yards by the time rucker's playing career came to an end he was one of the greatest receivers in the history of the browns as in his seven seasons with the team he racked up 310 receptions for 4 953 yards and 32 touchdowns if you looked at every player in brown's history at the time to have at least 300 receptions and 30 receiving touchdowns by the end of 1981 the list consisted of hall of famer dante lavelli hall of famer max speedy all 1960s team member gary collins and reggie rucker that's it he was in rather historic company however father time is undefeated and all great careers must come to an end at some point after a disappointing 1981 season where he posted just 27 receptions for 532 yards and one touchdown all career lows since joining the rounds he announced his retirement rucker could have stayed on as a backup receiver but he didn't want to do that the soon to be 35 year old receiver knew he had little left to give to the game that he loved especially after a back injury in 1981. as rucker said while tearing up the time has come to move on i don't like being second banana to anyone head coach samuel cigliano held rucker in high regard saying that he would miss him not only as an athlete but as a person calling him the most prepared player he's ever been around and calling him a classy and dignified like joe dimaggio but it was time for rucker to do something else and that's something else broadcasting just based off what rutigliano said about rucker in that farewell press conference it's not too much of a surprise that rucker would be a natural fit in the broadcasting world when it came to announcing games a big part of being a good broadcaster is that mental preparation when it comes to doing your research beforehand and it only took one year for rucker to find his way on nbc's team as beginning in 1983 rucker would call quite a few games for the network back then outside the top three broadcasting teams nbc would have a rotating cast of characters and rucker would work some games alongside the likes of jay randolph and phil stone this day of announcing wasn't great back then as you had a ton of color commentators who offered no insight were blatantly biased interjected at times when they weren't supposed to or a combination of all three here is one article from new york magazine that just goes to town on a ton of the announcing teams from 1983. it criticizes hank strand for being impossible to decipher criticizes the monday night football team for having too many talking heads criticizes bob costas for not keeping track of the game criticizes bob trumpy and john brody for talking too much and criticizes a lot of the color commentators from being indistinguishable from each other however i bring that skating article up because in that reggie rucker was one of the few men who received praise as the article called rucker very bright rucker wasn't like everyone else as he said that lots of other analysts were apologists for mediocre players and rucker wasn't having it he said everybody's not great everybody's not brilliant i like to separate the thoroughbreds from the plow horses early on if you're a player who's afraid to play and i'm the analyst i detect it very early on this style received praise for many the reviews were in and rucker was a rising star who was able to get himself an increased workload for the 1984 season because of it and one of those games was in week 8 on october 21st 1984 when the one in six cleveland browns traveled to cincinnati to take on the one in six bengals in an in-state rivalry game of the more than 20 000 games played in the history of the nfl this was definitely one of them the bengals won this game 12-9 in a game where not a single touchdown was scored as all 21 points came off as seven field goals this scheme would have historical significance to the immediate aftermath as samuratiglano was relieved of his duties as head coach of the browns and was replaced by marty schoenheimer following the loss however on the bengals side the big story from this scheme wouldn't be what happened on the field but rather what happened off of it in the announcing booth because during the broadcast reggie rucker said something that would rile up head coach sam weish and bring about one of the strangest controversies in nfl television history i need to emphasize just how much rucker was loved before what happened here rucker was somewhat of a natural in the broadcasting world and the eyes of a lot of television executives it was rare to see someone make the switch so naturally from playing career to commentating like rucker did after retirement he learned under the guidance of sydney andorne who was someone of a local legend in cleveland in the television and radio scene he hosted multiple television and radio shows was a color commentator for the cleveland indians in major league baseball got hired immediately after auditioning for nbc in may 1983 and executives and columnists loved what they saw he was moving up the ranks and there seemed to be nothing that could stop him which is what makes what happened here all the more bizarre during the 1984 season the bengals traded running back pete johnson to the san diego chargers in exchange for james brooks many bengals fans consider this trait to be the best of a team has ever made in their over 50 year history and rightfully so brooks played eight seasons in cincinnati made four pro bowls was an instrumental part in cincy's offense when they made it to superbowl 23 and finished his career as the all-time leader in franchise history in russian yards though corey dylan would eventually break that record a decade later however when brooks was starting out in 1984 he was not good at all entering that game against the browns brooks had just 66 rushing yards on 36 carries averaging a mere 1.8 yards per carry and he seemed to be doing worse in the offense as time went on as over his last four games he had 14 carries for 10 yards averaging 0.7 yards per carry he wasn't getting touches he wasn't playing well and didn't seem to have a good grasp for the offense that's when rucker went on the air during the game and talked about brooks's struggles he talked about how why she didn't have a lot of confidence in the newly acquired brooks and how weish told him firsthand that he was disappointed with brooks because he just couldn't get a handle on the playbook apparently the night before the game rucker had dinner with weish and weiss told him this information that's a great piece of information to bring up on the air it's good insight it shows that you're asking the right questions if the coach trusts you enough that he's going to divulge this information that could be said in front of millions of people and it's very relevant to the situation at hand the only problem yeah none of that ever happened rucker didn't have dinner with weiss and everything rucker just said he completely made up as safe to say sam weiss was absolutely furious [Music] white she had no idea about the comments after the game because obviously he wasn't listening to the broadcast while coaching the game and now the reporters brought it up because they weren't listening either but eventually that night when weiss got home he learned about what rucker said on the air he was baffled as to why rucker would not only make up something that weiss never said but would make up the fact that two men had dinner together and this wasn't one of those things where one person thinks it's a date and the other doesn't think it's a date or something like that no it was very clear that weish did not under any circumstances have dinner with rucker before the game when weiss got into the team facility on monday he ripped a new one into rucker and that's putting it mildly why she said on the now disgraced announcer reggie rucker is a blatant liar i've spoken to him maybe twice in my life reggie rucker is somewhere approaching mediocrity in what he does and when rucker was caught in the sly he knew he was completely screwed he admitted that everything was a lie and that he didn't have dinner with weiss although he did interview him for 90 seconds in a pregame thing on field contractually obligated an interview that takes less than two minutes dinner yeah that's the same thing once nbc confirmed the fact that rucker made all this up they were incredibly disappointed they didn't fire him or suspend him but officials said that they would watch him a little more carefully and put a greater scrutiny on him executive producer michael wiseman said that the fallout from this was punishment enough saying i think that reggie has been hurt in two ways his reputation and credibility have been dealt a blow i think that's damaged enough to reggie wiseman said that rucker was embarrassed about all of this and that even though there was no further punishment that this incident was a clear black mark on his career and that nbc won't allow for something like this to happen again even though rucker would escape further punishment the damage was done his broadcasting career was ruined rucker would get a reduced workload the rest of the way and would no longer be paired alongside phil stone for the remainder of the 1984 season rucker was relegated on the depth chart and most of the games he worked involved the cleveland browns who are one of the worst teams in football taking on some low level competition like the houston oilers buffalo bills and atlanta falcons all of whom would finish among the bottom of the league in other words rucker was now working meaningless games that no one really cared about and it seemed like rucker learned his lesson he called it a stupid mistake and his way of trying to do too much saying the dinner thing was just a fashionable way to introduce the material but not anymore nonsense my thing i found out there's never any excuse to not be 100 accurate in the broadcast business sam weiss was later a really good sport about the whole incident in week 2 of the 1985 season rucker was put on a broadcast team between the bengals and the st louis cardinals when rucker called up weish to come to a production meeting white suggested that the two men meet for dinner however while rucker was ready to move on and while weiss was ready to move on the damage had been done in the eyes of the public as rocket would never move up the announcing depth chart on nbc after that what seemed like a sure fire was sent to the top went completely stagnant as rucker continuously got bottom of the barrel games until he stopped calling games for the network after the 1988 season the saying that it takes years and years to create a reputation and only one moment to destroy it has never been truer than it was when talking about the reputation and broadcasting career of reggie rucker he was loved by executives and was supposedly the next big thing in broadcasting and it all came crashing down because of a dinner that never happened get your 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