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You want to talk college football? Veteran ESPN and ABC broadcaster Rod Gilmore is ready to go practically anytime. Prior to joining ESPN, Gilmore worked as an analyst with Prime Sports Network in California then SportsChannel Bay Area and the Pacific Sports Network. Gilmore was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1994 for his live coverage of Pac-10 football.
A 1982 Stanford University graduate, Rod Gilmore also holds the distinction of earning a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley and being an inductee into the Oakland Babe Ruth Baseball Hall Of Fame. Meanwhile Gilmore is active with multiple bar associations, while keeping up a busy dual career as an attorney and a prolific college football analyst.
But the words “multiple myeloma” left the veteran broadcaster stunned. Diagnosed with multiple myeloma in July 2016, Rod Gilmore has been managing his cancer diagnosis in exemplary fashion. Thanks to the "Myeloma Most Valuable Plan," as done in partnership with Amgen, Gilmore has been able to get his health back on-track as part of a team effort.
As recorded on October 15, 2019, I had the pleasure of speaking with Rod Gilmore over phone not only about his work with Amgen, but also his broadcasting career, his playing career as a college athlete and what else is coming up for Gilmore. Audio of the full interview is embedded below while highlights have been transcribed below, exclusively for Sportskeeda.
On his 2016 health scare:
Rod Gilmore: I was diagnosed in 2016 with multiple myeloma, which is a type of blood cancer. It's an aggressive, complex disease, which is marked by periods of remission and relapse. It's kind of like a rollercoaster. It can be an up an down thing... There's a lot I didn't know about it when I was diagnosed... I didn't know the time-frame and the treatments that were involved with it. So I was drinking from a firehose when I diagnosed.
I've teamed up with Amgen because Amgen has come up with the myeloma "M.V.P." which is a program that helps you develop a plan for developing with multiple myeloma. To me that is a huge step forward, because initially when you're diagnosed, it's really overwhelming and it's really critical to come up with a plan that works with you, to help you talk with your doctor to figure out what you need to do, and to help you build a team to help you manage this process over time and the ups and downs, and to really set your goals as to what's really important in creating that plan.
On his last words for the kids:
Rod Gilmore: If it's sports-related, keep doing what you're doing. If it's for the folks out there who are thinking of how to address multiple myeloma, have an annual physical. I have a lot of friends who shied away from that, now they're telling me they're taking care of that.
