Eli Gold: 'I'm coming back' to call Alabama football season after stage 3 cancer
Eli Gold, the radio voice of Alabama football, will be back in the booth this season, he told Tide 100.9 on Friday.
Gold missed all of the 2022 season with what doctors later discovered was stage 3 cancer.
"I'm now healthy, ready to go and looking forward to the season," Gold said.
Gold, 69, completed his cancer treatment in April and rang the bell to commemorate the end of his treatment.
Gold has been the voice of the Crimson Tide since 1988.
He went into the hospital in spring 2022, where he ended up for 186 days. Gold's legs stopped working one morning when he woke up.
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Gold lost significant weight: about 140 pounds. He didn't want to eat anything, nor could he keep anything down.
"The doctors told Claudette, my wife, they told her a couple times I might not make it through the night," Gold said in April. "I was a very sick boy. Turns out, I have gotten better. There’s still work to be done."
Doctors treated him for a variety of things that masked his cancer, and the cancer wasn't discovered until he developed a "terrible case of the hiccups." He kept hiccupping and couldn't catch his breath. It turns out, he had a cancerous growth in his esophagus.
He began chemotherapy on New Year's Eve.
Gold said Friday he has re-developed his ability to walk and carries a cane with him but often doesn't use it. He's going to the gym three times a week, and he plans to call the two fall scrimmages in August as practice for the season. He cut about 90 station promos the other day, he said, too.
"I'm coming back," Gold said.
He said there were a few things he learned while sitting in the hospital bed.
"You can't give up, man," Gold said. "You've got to fight. You can't give up. I learned that."
The things that kept him fighting include his family and his daughter, who's getting married in 2024. "I wanted to be able to walk her down the aisle," Gold said. Then he mentioned his Alabama family.
He plans to bring with him an additional purpose to the booth. Gold knows he's far from the only person to have suffered from cancer. He wants to broadcast not only for himself but for all the people whom cancer has impacted.
"I realized," Gold said, "I've got a lot more responsibility now not only to bring the games to the listeners but to beat back this disease on behalf of all the Bama people and everybody who has suffered from cancer or had a loved one either die from or deal with cancer."
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Eli Gold healthy, set to return to call Alabama football season
