KANSAS CITY, Mo. (July 24, 2012) – Jim Nantz, a multi-Emmy Award winner and five-time National Sportscaster of the Year, will receive the fourth annual Court of Honor Award from the National Association of Basketball Coaches Foundation on Monday, Sept. 17. The 2012 Court of Honor Gala will be held in New York City at Cipriani, 110 E. 42^nd Street between Lexington and Park.

       The Court of Honor Award is presented to an individual who has roots in college basketball, values those roots, and has gone on to distinguish himself in his profession, exhibiting the highest standards of leadership.

       Nantz called his 27^th consecutive broadcast of the NCAA^® Men’s Final Four^® this year on March 31 and April 2 in New Orleans and, since joining the CBS Television Network in 1985, has covered virtually every sport.  After serving as host of CBS’s coverage of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship and Final Four from 1986 to 1990, he assumed the role of lead play-by-play announcer.

       “As the voice of NCAA men’s college basketball for almost three decades, Jim Nantz has contributed significantly to the tremendous growth we have experienced in our game,” said Duke University coach Mike Krzyzewski, president of the NABC Foundation. “Jim’s elegant style fits perfectly with the excitement of the games. It’s difficult to imagine anyone else calling the play-by-play for the Final Four.”

       Nantz has been the lead play-by-play voice for THE NFL ON CBS since 2004 and has anchored the network’s golf coverage since April 1994.

       In 2007, he had the rare opportunity over a span of just 63 days to broadcast Super Bowl XLI between the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears, the NCAA Final Four and the Masters^®.  Nantz repeated that feat in 2010 and won his second consecutive Emmy Award for Outstanding Sports Personality – Play-By-Play.

       He co-authored the New York Times bestseller Always By My Side in 2008 with Eli Spielman, telling personal stories from his career in sports broadcasting combined with the virtues instilled in him by his father.

       A graduate of the University of Houston, Nantz continued to honor his father when he teamed with The Methodist Hospital in Houston to create the Nantz National Alzheimer Center (NNAC), an all-inclusive facility committed to cutting-edge Alzheimer’s research and treatment in hopes of one day finding a cure.  In addition, the NNAC also focuses on the connection between concussions and other traumatic brain injuries in athletes and their effects on dementing illnesses. 

       The inaugural Court of Honor Gala Experience was held in April 2009 in Chicago, where Jerry Colangelo, chairman of USA Basketball and the man who assembled the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic team in 2008, received the Court of Honor Award.  Former Senator Bill Bradley, who combined distinguished careers in basketball, politics and government to become an iconic figure across America, was the recipient of the 2010 Court of Honor Award in New York.  Phil Knight, the chairman and co-founder of Nike, Inc., the world’s largest sports and fitness company, received the award in 2011, also in New York.

       Proceeds from the Court of Honor Gala Experience help fund the NABC Foundation’s programs, including the TTRR (TICKET TO READING REWARDS) program, a reading incentive program that encourages middle school students to read books outside the classroom and obtain rewards for reading.  TTRR has three primary components: reading rewards, tickets to local college basketball games and a coaching component for middle school coaches to both learn new techniques and to act as mentors for the reading program.

       U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, when he was CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, and John W. Rogers Jr., founder and CEO of Ariel Investments, LLC, were instrumental in the launch of the TTRR program in Chicago. The program is now being conducted in more than 150 schools nationwide.

       Additional information on the Court of Honor Gala Experience at Cipriani, 110 E. 42^nd Street between Lexington and Park in New York City on Sept. 17, 2012, is available at www.nabcfoundation.org.

For additional information, contact:

Rick Leddy, NABC

(203-815-2437; email: ricknabc@gmail.com)

The National Association of Basketball Coaches Foundation, Inc., was organized exclusively for charitable and educational purposes, and to support the charitable and education purposes of the National Association of Basketball Coaches (“NABC”), a Kansas non-profit corporation.  The NABC Foundation is the founder of TTRR (Ticket to Reading Rewards), a national literacy program targeting middle school aged youth.  In addition, the Foundation operates the College Basketball Experience (CBE), an experiential facility that also includes the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame. Opened in October 2007, the CBE is adjacent to the Sprint Center in downtown Kansas City, Mo. For information concerning TTRR, go to www.tickettoreadingrewards.org.  For information concerning the College Basketball Experience, go to www.collegebasketballexperience.com.

About the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC)

Located in Kansas City, Missouri, the NABC was founded in 1927 by Forrest “Phog” Allen, the legendary basketball coach at the University of Kansas.  Allen, a student of Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, organized coaches into this collective group to serve as Guardians of the Game.  The NABC currently has nearly 5,000 members consisting primarily of university and college men’s basketball coaches.  All members of the NABC are expected to uphold the core values of being a Guardian of the Game by bringing attention to the positive aspects of the sport of basketball and the role coaches play in the academic and athletic lives of today’s student-athletes.  The four core values of being a Guardian of the Game are advocacy, leadership, service and education.  Additional information about the NABC, its programs and membership, can be found at www.nabc.org.