NBC Sports Chicago served fans well in 20-year run, which ends Monday
At 11:59:59 p.m. Monday, NBC Sports Chicago will cease to exist.
Eventually, it will disappear from channel guides and show listings, leaving no trace of its 20 years of delivering Chicago sports to your TV screens — and later your computers, phones and tablets.
“It’s always tough when something comes to an end,” said Kevin Cross, president and general manager of NBC 5, Telemundo Chicago and NBCSCH. “This week it’s starting to hit home. My focus was how do we get this renewed, then how do we get people employed. Those things are all settled. Now it’s real.”
At 5 p.m. Tuesday, the Chicago Sports Network will launch as the new home of the White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks. Though fans will see many familiar faces, the change represents the biggest separation from the teams’ lineage on regional sports networks.
When the teams moved from SportsChannel, their original home, to Fox Sports Net in 1998, most of the staffers moved with them. They didn’t even need to move offices. When the teams transitioned to Comcast SportsNet in 2004, the change was more dramatic because people from around the country joined those who moved over. (The channel rebranded as NBC Sports Chicago in 2017.)
“This one feels the most different,” said Cross, who experienced both prior moves. “This is being run by the teams. This has been an industry with a lot of change. It's just the way it is.”
Pat Boyle was one of those people from around the country who joined Comcast SportsNet. He came from ESPN, where he was an anchor on “SportsCenter” and ESPNews. Before that, he was at Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia. His first job at CSN Chicago was anchoring “Sports Nite” with Kerry Sayers.
Boyle remembers when the Cubs, who were part of the network until launching Marquee Sports Network in 2020, made a blockbuster trade for Red Sox shortstop Nomar Garciaparra in July 2004. He recalls the TV coverage of the deal was lacking. At the time, he said CSN, which would launch that October, would change that.
“We are going to bring you the manager, and you are going to see the storyline,” Boyle said. “Now it’s expected that you’re going to get the manager afterward. But that wasn’t the case in 2004. I think we changed that in Chicago.”
Boyle began hosting Bears postgame shows in 2005, working with former Bears Jerry Azumah, Richard Dent, Dan Jiggetts and Jim Miller. He hosted other shows with Muhsin Muhammad, Alex Brown and Lance Briggs. That all changed in 2012.
“I pivoted to the Blackhawks and had an amazing turn,” said Boyle, who will continue as the Hawks’ studio host on the new network. “That was the best decision in my career. At first, I was a little reluctant, but management wanted me to be with one of the owners of the network. It’s been cool to carve out a sports identity in Chicago, the guy that’s been able to be the gatekeeper on Blackhawks coverage.”
Chuck Garfien is another CSN original who came from a different network. But Garfien, who arrived from FSN Denver, graduated from Homewood-Flossmoor High School and grew up as a Sox fan. He started at CSN splitting time between anchoring the midnight edition of “SportsNite” and hosting Bulls pregame and postgame shows with Stacey King. That changed in 2005.
“They knew I was a big Sox fan growing up,” Garfien said. “As the season went on, I just kept doing more and more White Sox, and then sure enough they win the World Series. I was covering the team down the stretch and into the playoffs. I was reporting live when the Sox won the division in Detroit, [in the playoffs] from Boston, Anaheim, Houston.”
Garfien became the Sox’ studio host. Cross said he embodies what NBCSCH has wanted in its hosts, someone emotionally invested in the team but able to add knowledge and perspective. Garfien also made significant contributions to the network’s digital push over the years.
“When we went on the air, all we did was TV,” Garfien said. “We had no website, no podcast. We just followed the linear world of TV. Over these 20 years, we zigged and zagged the changing landscape. We did 961 White Sox podcasts, and we are almost at 7 million downloads. We all had to evolve and adapt because we needed to be where the fans are.”
Garfien is expected to continue in his role at the new network, but he’s emotional about the old one.
“Our network unfortunately has had a very slow death,” he said. “What’s really unfortunate to me is over the last few years, ever since the pandemic, we had a bunch of layoffs. We’ve run a really tight ship, and everyone who comes in is bringing their A game every day. This is the best we’ve been the last few years, and it shows on the air. I can’t say how unique and fortunate that is to have that kind of ending.”
In its two decades, NBCSCH covered five championship teams: the Sox in 2005, the network’s first baseball season, the Hawks in 2010, ’13 and ’15 and the Cubs in 2016. The Bulls didn’t get there, but the Derrick Rose years were special nonetheless. And the network did everything it could, in good times and bad, to provide fans with comprehensive and objective coverage of their teams.
“The one thing that I go back to is how proud I am of the work that our employees did,” Cross said. “They gave everything they had to this network. And it really wasn’t to this network, it was to the fans. We were side by side with the fans. That’s what I’ll remember the most, being proud that we were, as one of our catchphrases was, we were fans’ best friend.”