The NBC Sports Bay Area logo on a wall at Oracle Park in San Francisco on Aug. 24, 2026.
Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE
There are no absolutes when Greg Papa looks ahead at football season, not with the Bay Area sports media legend’s health issues still ongoing.
“I’m still sorting out what I’m going to be able to do physically,” Papa told SFGATE in a phone call on Monday.
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But even with the uncertainty, Papa — who was laid off from KNBR-AM/FM by Cumulus earlier this month — is making moves with the hope that he’ll be seen and heard a lot during this upcoming San Francisco 49ers season.
On Tuesday, NBC Sports Bay Area plans to announce Papa will have an “expanded” role on the network during 49ers season. He’s already a weekly guest on the “49ers Talk” podcast, hosted by insiders Matt Maiocco and Jennifer Lee Chan, and also regularly appears on the streaming show “49ers Now.” But the addition will be Papa making appearances on the pregame and postgame shows throughout the 49ers season.
Last July, Papa was diagnosed with leukemia. In August, he announced the diagnosis and that he was going through chemotherapy, taking him off both the KNBR airwaves and 49ers broadcasts. While he was still able to do some of his usual work from home, by the middle of the NFL season last year, he only did one 49ers broadcast on the air.
This season, Papa also plans to be a regular contributor to KNTV’s weekly sports recap show, “Sports Sunday presented by Xfinity” hosted by Dave Feldman. Papa isn’t sure exactly how often he’ll be in the studio.
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“The NBC people have been great to me,” Papa told SFGATE. “Last year when I was not well and missed a lot of the assignments, they still took care of me, and they didn’t have to. They’ve always been great to me there, and this role will be great.”
Broadcaster Greg Papa looks on before the game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Seattle Seahawks at Levi’s Stadium on Jan. 3, 2026, in Santa Clara, Calif.
Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images
Papa had a successful bone marrow transplant in the spring that left him hopeful for a full recovery. But as the San Francisco Chronicle detailed earlier this month, he was hospitalized twice after the transplant, the second stint lasting 78 days after his lungs collapsed. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.) Even after leaving the hospital, Papa still needs regular oxygen and is going through extensive rehabilitation, including specialized pulmonary and cardiac rehab.
But Papa said he’s gotten “remarkably better quickly” and has a clear goal in mind: returning to his primary job calling play-by-play on the radio broadcasts. That’s even as he isn’t sure if his lungs are ready to handle a full three-hour football game broadcast, something that’s already ruled out the season-opening trip to Australia when the 49ers face the Rams.
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“I asked [my doctor] about going up to Tahoe, and he said, ‘You could do it, but it wouldn’t be great for your lungs to be at higher altitude,’” Papa said. “Obviously, flying in an airplane with the cabin pressure and being at 40,000 feet, I don’t know how my lungs would handle it and how that would work. We haven’t gotten there.”
Whether Papa is on the air for the games or not, expect Guy Haberman to be on the radio broadcast, as Bay Area News Group first reported last week. Haberman was the primary fill-in last season and has done play-by-play in Papa’s place so far this preseason. If Papa can do games, Haberman will work as the sideline reporter.
“He was the perfect choice in this role for every single level,” Papa said. “You know, not just his broadcasting ability, which is exemplary, but who he is as a human being, who he’s been as a friend to me. He’s just a great human being, and he’s perfect in any role that he’s asked to do. I love Guy.”
Papa is able to travel in and around the Bay Area, though. After the Australia game, the Niners have three straight home games, giving Papa hope he could call the games on the radio. He’s even contemplating whether he could travel without flying to other 49ers road games, starting with Seattle in October.
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And the Bay Area travel capabilities allow him to come back to the NBC Sports Bay Area studios, a place he is intimately familiar with. Papa quipped he was “on for all hours of the day” at one point in the station’s history, hosting Giants pregame and postgame shows in their 2010s dynasty run and popular hourlong talk shows like “Chronicle Live” and “The Happy Hour” — all while manning daily talk shows on one of the local radio stations.
Papa acknowledges that his health may preclude him from doing any of the work he is aspiring to do. But especially after a rather unceremonious exit from KNBR, it’s some work Papa can tether himself to for the NFL season.
“This is a tremendous opportunity for me to be involved and talk about the team and with people I love and trust and, you know, get back into it a little bit,” Papa said. “So yeah, there was no reason not to be involved. It’s a great setup.”
Papa isn’t the only change coming to NBC Sports Bay Area’s 49ers shows, especially after two key parts of the show left the station earlier this year. Kylen Mills will be the host, adding to Giants game-hosting duties, while Bonta Hill will be on-site at 49ers home games for player interviews.
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Mills takes over hosting from Carlos Ramirez, who left the station last month. Meanwhile, Hill will fill the role that was previously held by Laura Britt, who departed earlier this year to move to Georgia. The rest of the pregame and postgame show structure will remain the same as last season, with Maiocco and Rod Brooks on the show as analysts while Chan is on-site for both home and road games.
Mills and Hill are the only two full-time hosts remaining at the station and are splitting the three teams between them, with Mills handling the Giants and 49ers while Hill takes on the Warriors. It isn’t clear what the station will do when they have conflicting broadcasts, like when both the Giants and 49ers play on the same Sundays in September or when the Warriors and 49ers overlap in the winter.