ALAMEDA – Football legend Lee Grosscup passed away Monday at the age of 83. Affectionately and widely known as "The Cupper", Grosscup spent the past 34 seasons as a member of the Cal football broadcast team after joining Joe Starkey in the Golden Bears' broadcast booth in 1986. He was Cal's radio analyst for 18 seasons until moving to the post-game show in 2004. Grosscup officially retired in 2018 but continued as a frequent contributor to the broadcast team last season.

"I hope I can get through this because I'm a wreck," Starkey originally told Cal Sports Report. "We were really close. On Cal road trips, we would always go in a day early and play golf. We were close friends from the start to the finish."

"He was always extremely well-prepared," Starkey added. "That's really important for an analyst. Lee was always really detailed and had a great sense of humor. And his voice was great for broadcasting. It really jumped out at you."

Grosscup played witness to many memorable moments at Cal. He was there for Joe Kapp's final season and Big Game victory over Stanford in his first season in 1986 followed by the Bears' impressive five-year run under head coach Bruce Snyder, which included a No. 8 national ranking and a memorable rout of Clemson in the Citrus Bowl following the 1991 campaign. He saw Steve Mariucci and the Bears take down USC at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the first time in 26 years in 1996. He was on hand for Cal's rout of Stanford in the 2002 Big Game during the first season under head coach Jeff Tedford and a win that snapped a seven-game losing streak against the Cardinal and the beginning of the program's resurgence under Justin Wilcox that has seen Cal reach bowl games and post winning seasons in back-to-back campaigns over the last two years for the first time since 2008 and 2009.

Grosscup began a career in broadcasting in 1966 that started with one season calling games in the American Football League for NBC before he moved on to become a college football analyst for ABC for 20 seasons, working alongside such legends as the late Keith Jackson and Al Michaels. He was also the first radio analyst for the Oakland Invaders as well as television broadcaster in the USFL from 1982-85 and worked as the radio analyst for the Sacramento Gold Miners of the Canadian Football League during the 1993 and 1994 campaign.

Born in Santa Monica in 1936, the quarterback prepped in his hometown before starting his collegiate playing career at Washington in 1955. After one season in Seattle, he returned home to play at Santa Monica College in 1956 before transferring to Utah, where he was a first-team All-American and finished 10th in the Heisman Trophy voting as a 1957 junior. A shoulder injury limited him in his 1958 senior season, but he was still selected to play in the Senior Bowl in 1959 and taken by the New York Giants with the 10th overall pick of the 1959 NFL Draft.

Grosscup was with the Giants for three seasons (1959-61) before spending another five campaigns on professional football of the Minnesota Vikings (1962), New York Titans (1962), Saskatchewan Roughriders (1963), Oakland Raiders (1964) and Hartford Charter Oaks (1965-66).

Memorial arrangements are pending.