A Podcast Tribute: David Moulton

Before we get going this week, I need a minute for a friend. Because our lives are a little bit poorer.

David Moulton died Saturday night. He was 59. For six years he fought stage four kidney cancer, and he never stopped fighting. He kept trying new treatments and kept showing up for work, until two months ago, when he finally had to tell his listeners he needed to step away.

David was my longtime friend. He was an outstanding broadcaster and the consummate journalist. And something that doesn’t always go with the first two: he was a really good person.

We did a lot of shows together over the years, and I never once saw him show up unprepared. He was a walking reservoir of sports information. Names, games, scores, the play nobody else remembered. His partner of 20 years, Mark Miller, called him “a sports encyclopedia,” and Mark wasn’t exaggerating.

What I respected most was how hard he worked at being fair. On the air, and in the columns he wrote for the Fort Myers News-Press and Naples Daily News, David never took the cheap shot. He wanted to get it right before he got it loud. In this business, that’s rarer than it ought to be.

The big names trusted him, too. Gary Danielson and Verne Lundquist at CBS relied on David, and that kind of trust only comes from years of being right when it counts. He did the same for Troy Aikman and Joe Buck on the NFL. When the camera was on the guys in the booth, David was the reason they sounded so sure. He was also the voice of FGCU, and every morning he was half of Miller and Moulton.

One thing I’ll always remember is that on our pro-Florida Gator podcasts in which he often was a guest, he would keep me honest when I got over my skis and began to see too many things in orange and blue — nothing critical but maybe a soft body check.

The press box just won’t be the same without him.

Our thoughts are with his wife, Julie, and his daughter, Melissa. Rest easy, David. Nobody will ever be able to take your place.

Editorial illustration: GatorBait Media, based on a portrait supplied by Buddy Martin.