Colt Knost opens up about CBS Tower promotion, TV goals and criticism
On top of that, Colt Knost’s job took his place.
It requires him to visit three of the most beautiful golf courses on earth every year: Augusta National, Riviera Golf and Pebble Beach Golf Course. That would require him to play in two majors and at least two-thirds of the meaningful golf events on the calendar. He’s seen him travel from the corrugated steel town of the Phoenix Open to the treeless grounds of the Scottish Open and just about every golf course in between.
But if you want to know what qualifies Colt Knost to be the kind of pro golf broadcaster who gets promoted to CBS’ “Super Tower” on Wednesday mornings — if you want to understand why he flies to all the beautiful and important places in the golf world just to talk about them — you really should ask him elsewhere. Somewhere…less respected.
John Deere.
“John Deere Week is my favorite event, and honestly, it’s because of one of the restaurants there,” Knost said with a laugh. “It’s called Duck City. And, I mean, Chef Jeremy, the chef, has always been there, he took it over from his dad, Chef Charles. I mean, every time you walk in there, it looks like the players are dining.”
Duck City is a special place for Knost, and his daily 7 p.m. table is one of the rhythms of the annual schedule that keeps his personal golf world spinning (not to mention Duck City’s famous veal jalapeños—Knost’s favorite). But is he confident in picking out John Deere Week in all the glorious places mentioned above? that is Special sauce.
“It surprised everyone,” Knost said. “It’s not the greatest ballpark in the world, but every year we turn it into such a fun week.”
In most ways, the work of a successful sports television analyst is visionary. Emerson said that a person is measured “The angle through which he observes objects“If this is true, then the measure of a good sports television voice is his sharpness, what separates him from bland platitudes and listless axioms—”Boy, he’s a great golfer.” — has dominated golf telecasts from the beginning.
In other words, a successful sports television voiceover job requires the skills to visit Augusta National Park, but Willingness Single out John Deere.
Knost’s acumen was recognized by CBS bosses with a promotion Wednesday morning. He will join Frank Nobilo, Trevor Immelman and Jim Nantz in the Super Tower in 2026, replacing the retiring Ian Baker-Finch. The new job is Knost’s third since joining golf media following a successful career on the Professional Tour, the latest in a meteoric rise from a golfer with a good sense of humor to one of the professional golf commentators.
Knost admits he’s still a work in progress as a broadcaster, but the lessons learned from his first year in the booth show a lot of promise.
“I remember, after my first few games as a selector, [legendary CBS Sports producer Jim Rikhoff] Sent me this great text that basically said, ‘Listen, we hired you because of who you are, because we know you, and I want you to do the same in radio. ‘”
What’s the thread of Rickhoff’s message?
“If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, but you can’t be a different person,” Knost recalled. He took it to heart.
He quickly realized that being his most honest self in front of millions of television viewers could be difficult. Even when criticism is justified, it spreads quickly.
“Charles Barkley, one of my radio heroes, said it best,” Knost said. “He told me, ’90 percent of the time you can praise these guys and they’ll never call and say thank you, but as soon as you criticize them, they’re going to call you and wear you down. You have to be prepared for that.'”
This is an additional challenge for Knost. When Barkley criticizes basketball players, he’s mostly talking about people one-third his age; when Knost criticizes golfers, he’s often talking about his friends.
What should he do? The honest answer is, it’s hard. Even if the core requirements of honesty and objectivity are clear, the lines on sports television are difficult for every former athlete to navigate. Knost is expected to speak candidly within milliseconds of witnessing the decision that will determine his fortune and legacy. Sometimes those decisions are wrong, and he has a responsibility to say so.
“This is in no way personal against them,” Knost said. “But if a player has a problem with something I said, I’m always happy to talk about it.”
Clearly, it’s working. Knost’s move to the CBS booth is his third promotion in five years with Golf Television. His responsibilities will expand from covering one group to covering the entire field. His dream of one day reaching Golf Network’s top job, chief analyst, had just been shaken.
“Look, it’s the resume factor,” Nost said, acknowledging the golf industry’s longstanding tradition of hiring only major champions as lead analysts. “But I think I can definitely do it one day.”
Knost wasn’t a big winner, unless you count the U.S. Amateur, but he didn’t mind that. If one day he gets the job of chief analyst, it won’t be because his brain can approximate a big winner. Precisely because it couldn’t – because Knost saw something that the major winners didn’t.
Like John Deere’s Ducktown.
