In his last Super Bowl, CBS' Sean McManus reflects on 'the ultimate TV drama'
NEW YORK — CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus has a bit of trouble recalling the first Super Bowl he ever attended.
It may have been 1980 when the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Los Angeles Rams at the Rose Bowl, he said during a recent conversation at his office on Manhattan's West Side.
But when you've spent much of your life in control rooms and trailers for major sporting events since working as a 12-year-old production assistant at the Jacksonville Open for $25 in cash, it's hard to keep track.
On Sunday, he will oversee the CBS telecast of Super Bowl LVIII, when the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs take on the San Francisco 49ers at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. It will be McManus's ninth and final trip to the Big Game in the executive role he has held since 1996.
McManus, 68, is retiring in April following CBS' coverage of the Masters golf tournament, capping a career that spanned much of the history of TV sports. (He will be succeeded by his second-in-command David Berson).
He is the son of Jim McKay, the legendary ABC Sports broadcaster who hosted "Wide World of Sports," the anthology program that brought events that ranged from barrel jumping to world champion heavyweight fights into the nation's living rooms during the 1960s and '70s. A teenage McManus was in Munich for the 1972 Summer Olympics, where McKay reported on the killing of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian militants.
After stints at ABC, NBC and IMG, McManus
