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“Onions!” Bill Raftery, the legendary sportscaster who has become closely aligned with college basketball and whose signature catchphrase makes use of the aforementioned root vegetable, has signed with CAA for representation.
Raftery has called college basketball for CBS’ college sports coverage for years, holding forth with James Brown, Sean McDonough, Verne Lundquist, Jim Nantz, Grant Hill and Ian Eagle. He will be in place in 2026 as Paramount Skydance’s CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT and TBS air the various games of the coming March Madness tournament.
Raftery had previously been represented by RLR Associates.
Raftery, a four-time Sports Emmy winner, is also know for his many years of work as Fox Sports’ lead college basketball analyst. He also served as lead analyst for the Nets for 20 years, and began calling games for the team in 1982.
Raftery is a 2017 inductee into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame and a recipient of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s Curt Gowdy Media Award.
As a player, Raftery was drafted by the New York Knicks, and had a 16-year collegiate coaching career at Seton Hall and Fairleigh Dickinson.
He began his broadcasting career as co-host of ESPN’s “College Hoops Tonight” in 1980.
Raftery was the subject of “With A Kiss,” a 2016 documentary about his first time calling the FInal Four at age 71, which was produced by his son Billy and Raftery’s broadcasting partner, Grant Hill. The documentary debuted in 2016. Raftery’s daughter, Kelli, is also in the media business, working as vice president of global communications for Roku.
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