Ron Pitts

Ron Pitts

No. 28
Position:	Cornerback
Personal information
Date of birth:	(1962-10-14) October 14, 1962
Place of birth:	Detroit, Michigan
Height:
Weight:
Career information
College:	UCLA
NFL draft:	1985 / Round: 7 / Pick: 169
Career history
Buffalo Bills (1985-1987) Green Bay Packers (1988-1990)
Career NFL statistics as of 1990
Games played: 66 Games started: 6 Interceptions: 7 Player stats at NFL.com

Ronald Dwayne Pitts (born October 14, 1962) is a former professional American football player. He played cornerback for the Buffalo Bills and the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the University of California, Los Angeles Bruins.

Pitts was drafted by the Bills in the seventh round of the 1985 NFL Draft. Since retiring he has worked as a sportscaster and entertainment reporter, and currently works for CBS Sports Network on its college football coverage as a fill-in play-by-play announcer, and as a co-host for the syndicated news magazine OK!TV.

Early life and education

Pitts was born in Detroit, Michigan in October 1962. He moved to Orchard Park, New York as a teenager and attended Orchard Park High School. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he played college football for the UCLA Bruins.

Career

Professional career

Pitts was drafted in the 7th round in 1985 and had a brief playing career in which he played for the Buffalo Bills and the Green Bay Packers. From 1986 to 1990, Pitts played 66 games at defensive back, starting six times. He had seven career interceptions. One of Pitts's interceptions came off of San Francisco 49ers Hall of Famer Jerry Rice.

Broadcasting career

Pitts worked for Fox Sports' play-by-play announcers for 18 years doing play-by-play for the NFL on FOX but left after the 2012 season. He also co-hosted Under the Helmet (a weekly E/I program full of NFL-related segments for younger viewers) and former Fox Sports Net programs Total Access (whose name was later adopted by NFL Network for its own newscast) and Hardcore Football. Earlier in his broadcasting career Pitts worked as a college football analyst for ABC Sports and a correspondent for Black Entertainment Television. In 2014, Pitts joined CBS Sports Network as a play-by-play announcer doing a limited number of games

Acting career

Pitts also had a cameo as a sports commentator in the film Hot Shots! Part Deux. He also appears as an alternate version of himself during the "Eggheads" episode of the American TV series Sliders. He is also mentioned in the 1984 Michael Nesmith movie Repo Man, in a college football radio broadcast heard in the background as the robbers bungle their way out of a store and just before the main characters walk in.

Pitts' voice was featured as an announcer in Microsoft's NFL Fever, a Football video game for the original Xbox.

In 2008, Pitts was hired to host a new show on the Discovery Channel named Destroyed In Seconds. The show features video clips of disasters, accidents, and other destructive events, both natural and man-made.

Personal life

His father, Elijah Pitts, also played for the Packers and was part of two Super Bowl champion teams, Super Bowl I and Super Bowl II. Ron Pitts is mentioned briefly as one of several players' children who visited the Packers' locker room in Jerry Kramer's diary of the 1967 season, Instant Replay. He has two sons, Lee and Shea.

References

• The ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia. New York: Sterling, 2006