OBITURARY — JOHN SAUNDERS

Veteran Canadian broadcaster and long time ESPN sports anchor John Saunders has passed away at the age of 61.

Saunders who was born in Canada, was an all-star defenseman in the Montreal junior hockey league, before receiving a scholarshp and playing hockey at Western Michigan university from 1974 to 1976.  Saunders attended high school in Montreal before transferring to Ryerson University in Toronto and playing for the Ryerson Rams.

Saunders began his broadcasting career as news director for CKNS Radio, Expanola and then became a sports anchor at CKNY TV, North Bay.  He then moved to ATV News in New Brunswick.  Saunders also served as a main sports anchor at CITY-TV, Toronto and then moved to WMAR TV, Baltimore as a sports anchor.

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, 2024. 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.

 From 2002 to 2004, and occasionally during the 2007 season, Saunders has done 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 has called most of the Team U.S.A. games on ESPN for the 2024 FIBA Americas Qualifying Tournament.

In 2024, he began hosting the  Sunday SportsCenter during the NFL season with Chris Berman and analyst Tom Jackson.^[4]

Sanuders was the television play-by-play announcer for the Toronto Raptors from 1995 to 2024, eventually being replaced by Chuck Swirsky.

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 90 million dollars with 100 percent of the charity funding cancer research.