Greg Papa won’t be calling games in 2026, and the news landed as a surprise across the NFL and Bay Area radio world.
KNBR 680 AM has moved on from Papa’s daily midday hosting role, ending his run alongside his longtime partner after what the station described as a programming pivot by management. The shakeup arrives just before the upcoming regular season and adds another abrupt turn to a career that has already been interrupted by serious health problems and earlier media changes.
Papa’s resume stretches across nearly four decades and just about every corner of Bay Area sports broadcasting. He spent 21 years as the radio voice of the Oakland Raiders and became famous for his trademark “Touchdownnnnnnnnn Raiders!”
call. In 2019, he took over as the play-by-play radio voice of the San Francisco 49ers.
His work has gone far beyond football, too. Papa started in the NBA with the Indiana Pacers, later moved to California to handle radio duties for the Golden State Warriors, and eventually called games for the San Antonio Spurs. In baseball, he worked more than a decade as the television play-by-play announcer for the Oakland Athletics before later calling games for the San Francisco Giants.
Papa’s exit comes at a difficult moment personally. He has spent recent months recovering from a serious medical diagnosis that required extensive hospitalization. The broadcaster, who has dealt with severe health issues before, had continued to do his job through those disruptions.
For now, it’s unclear what comes next for the cancer survivor.
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