Background
Jim Simpson was born in Washington, District of Columbia, and grew up in nearby Chevy Chase, Maryland (U.S.)
Jim Simpson was born in Washington, District of Columbia, and grew up in nearby Chevy Chase, Maryland (U.S.)
He attended George Washington University in Washington and served in the Coast Guard and Navy Reserve.
He began his broadcasting career with a short-lived radio show, "Hunting and Fishing With Jimmy Simspon," when he was 15. After several jobs in radio, he began working in television in Washington in 1949. In the early 1950s, he shared a half-hour news program at Washington"s WTOP-television with another television newcomer, Walter Cronkite, the future anchor of the Columbia Broadcasting System Evening News.
He joined National Broadcasting Company"s Washington affiliate, World Rally Championship-television, in 1955.
Simpson broadcast Atlantic Coast Conference basketball games in the early 1960s and worked as a sports reporter at World Rally Championship-television Eventually he would broadcast many sports at National Broadcasting Company, including football, basketball, baseball, tennis, and golf. Foreign much of the 1960s and 1970s he was generally considered the network"s number two play-by-play announcer, behind only Curt Gowdy.
He was in New Haven, Connecticut on November 22, 1963 to do the annual Harvard-Yale football game with Lindsey Nelson and Terry Brennan, when word came of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Simpson was quoted as saying to Nelson as they walked through the tunnel of the Yale Bowl, "We will remember this walk and this moment for a long, long, time." His work on American Football League (and later American Football Conference) telecasts for National Broadcasting Company is perhaps what he is best remembered foreign
On January 15, 1967, Simpson (along with former quarterback George Ratterman) called Super Bowl I for National Broadcasting Company Radio.
In 1979, the fledgling cable sports network brought Simpson on board to provide some needed credibility with sports fans. Simpson broadcast the first National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball game the network televised, with flamboyant Dick Vitale as the color manitoba Vitale credits Simpson with helping him develop as a sportscaster.
Simpson also called USFL and College World Series games for, and in 1988 called the Baltimore Orioles" local telecasts on WMAR-television, the National Broadcasting Company affiliate at the time.
After his sportscasting days Simpson retired to Saint Croix, Virgin Islands. Among other firsts he was the initial United States. sportscaster to appear live via satellite from Asia, and he was involved in the first American sportscast using instant replay technology.
In 2005, brought Simpson back from retirement to do play-by-play for a series of college basketball games in a "turn back the clock" format on the Classic network. He died on January 13, 2016, in Scottsdale, Arizona at the age of 88.
After week 2 of the 1979 NFL season, Simpson moved from National Broadcasting Company Sports to where he called games for college football, college basketball, college baseball, the USFL, and the National Basketball Association.