John Saunders

John Peterson Saunders (February 2, 1955 – August 10, 2016) was a Canadian-American sports journalist from Toronto, Ontario. He worked for ESPN and ABC.

Early life and career

Saunders was an all-star defenseman in the Montreal junior leagues, received a scholarship and played hockey at Western Michigan University from 1974–76. His brother, Bernie Saunders, also played hockey at Western Michigan during this time. He attended high school in Montreal. He transferred to Ryerson University in Toronto and played for the Rams from 1976–78. After the 1977–78 season, Saunders was named to the Ontario University Athletic Association All-Star team. He was the news director for CKNS Radio (Espanola, Ontario, 1978), and sports anchor at CKNY-TV (North Bay, Ontario, 1978–1979) and at ATV News (New Brunswick, 1979–1980). He also served as the main sports anchor for CITY-TV (Toronto, 1980–1982). He then moved to the United States to work as a sports anchor at WMAR-TV (Baltimore, 1982–1986).

Career at ESPN and ABC Sports

Saunders joined ESPN in 1986 and was the host of ESPN's The Sports Reporters, starting with the illness and subsequent death of Dick Schaap in September 2001. He previously co-hosted NFL Primetime from 1987 to 1989. He was also the studio host for the network's NHL broadcasts from 1992–93 until 2004, and was the studio host of ABC's coverage of college football. He has also hosted ABC's coverage of baseball under the Baseball Night in America banner and was involved in ESPN's coverage earlier in his career. He also anchored the 1995 World Series.

NBA

From 2002 to 2004, and occasionally during the 2007 season, Saunders did play-by-play for ESPN's coverage of the NBA, mostly on Sunday nights. He was the studio host of ESPN's NBA Shootaround from 2004 to 2006.

Saunders also served as a back-up play-by-play man for NBA on ABC. He called most of the Team U.S.A. games on ESPN for the 2007 FIBA Americas Qualifying Tournament.

SportsCenter

In 2008, he began hosting the 7pm ET Sunday SportsCenter during the NFL season with Chris Berman and analyst Tom Jackson.

Toronto Raptors

He was the television play-by-play announcer for the Toronto Raptors from 1995 to 2001, eventually being replaced by Chuck Swirsky.

Personal life

John was an advocate for juvenile diabetes research and was a founding board member of the Jimmy V Foundation for cancer research, a charity that has raised almost $90M with 100% of the charity funding cancer research.

Saunders lived in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, with his wife and children. On August 10, 2016, he died at the age of 61.