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Birmingham news anchor and former Alabama football player Christopher Sign dies at 45

Christopher Sign, an anchor for ABC 33/40 in Birmingham, Alabama and a former Alabama football player, has died, the station announced Saturday. He was 45.

"Our deepest sympathy is shared with Christopher's loving family and close friends," ABC 33/40 VP and general manager Eric Land said in a statement. "We have lost a revered colleague whose indelible imprint will serve forever as a hallmark of decency, honesty and journalist integrity. We can only hope to carry on his legacy. May his memory be for blessing."

Sign was an offensive lineman for Alabama from 1994-1997, playing for Gene Stallings and Mike DuBose. Sign's wife, Laura, played volleyball at Alabama. The couple had three sons.

Keith Czeskleba of the Hoover (Alabama) Police Department told AL.com and TODAY that Sign's death is being investigated as a suicide.

Chris Sign
Chris Sign

Sign was a Dallas/Fort Worth area native whose first reporting job was in Montgomery, Alabama, according to his bio on the ABC 33/40 website.

Sign went to Midland/Odessa, Texas, before returning to Alabama to work in Birmingham at ABC 33/40 in the late 1990s and early 2000s, his first stint with the station. He won a national Edward R. Murrow Award, one of TV journalism's highest honors, for his coverage of a deadly Tuscaloosa tornado.

After that, he spent 13 years in Phoenix, where he won four Emmy awards as a reporter and anchor. Sign returned to Birmingham in 2017 to serve as ABC 33/40's evening anchor.

In the release, ABC 33/40 said that Sign turned down an opportunity to work for one of the national networks to return to Birmingham because of the opportunity to spend time seeing his sons off to school, watch them play baseball and fish with them on weekends.

During his time at ABC 33/40, he also had a one-on-one sit-down interview with Alabama coach Nick Saban in 2019.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Christopher Sign, Birmingham anchor, ex-Alabama football player, dies