Brian Neuner never thought of himself as a numbers person. But shortly after he resigned as a TV sportscaster in 2000, he found himself mulling an offer that would eventually put him at the head of Columbia’s UMB Bank. So far, the career move is adding up nicely.

Don Shrubshell photos

Above, Brian Neuner holds his daughter Cayleigh, 1, while his wife Candy and children Caroline, 4, and Clayton, 8, feed horses on their farm east of Columbia. Below, Brian Neuner, community president of UMB Bank, second from left, meets with fellow officers from left, Michelle Mountjoy, small business banking officer; Craig McGonagle, senior vice president; and Rhett Brengarth, commercial loan officer.

Sporting their bright yellow UMB Bank T-shirts, Sarah Smith, Ashley Reynolds, Cindy Nichols and Michelle Mountjoy worked the crowd Tuesday at the annual Chamber of Commerce Business Conference and Showcase.

Bank employees had crafted a tropical “Fun in the Sun” booth complete with plastic palm trees, fake leis, the “Wheel of Fun” and bright slushy fruit drinks served in UMB plastic cups.

What did palm trees and leis have to do with banking?

“We’re encouraging people to save for a trip to Hawaii,” Mountjoy said with a laugh.

It’s the type of booth that might be expected from a group of unconventional bankers with backgrounds that include high school math teacher, horseback riding instructor, interior designer and architect.

And it’s the type of group that might be expected when led by a former television sports director turned banker.

For Brian Neuner, 41, becoming a banker was about as likely as making a half-court shot.

There’s usually a critical event or choice that serves as a defining moment in each life and causes a new direction. For Neuner, that moment likely came on Jan. 21, 2000, when he brought his 16-month-old son onto the TV set. It was his day to pick up his son from daycare. He faced the camera for his evening sports broadcast at KOMU-TV and said goodbye after 11 years.

Only his family and two close friends knew what Neuner planned to do that night, and only they knew the reasons why. And that’s the way he wants to keep it.

“If things fall right, I could be one of the happiest guys around,” Neuner later told former Tribune Sports Editor Kent Heitholt. “I just feel bad that my time there had to end like this.”

Things have fallen right.

A few weeks after his sudden resignation, Neuner found himself in the office of Kansas City financier Crosby Kemper hearing a pitch for him to join the Columbia operations of UMB Bank, a subsidiary of a holding company with $9 billion in assets and 139 banking centers throughout seven states.

When Neuner signed up as vice president in April 2000, the local UMB operation had some $6.7 million in reported deposits. Now those deposits are 10 times larger, and he’s the president in a crowded banking market.

Friends say it’s no coincidence that the personable Neuner has thrived in his new role as banker.

“He’s a good people person,” said longtime friend Jon Sundvold, who transformed from basketball star to financial advisor with his Sundvold Financial. “He cares about the people he deals with in whatever work he does.”

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Neuner, of Jefferson City, said family events, sports and frequent excursions to his grandparents’ farm in the Missouri River bottoms were the highlights of his youth. His father, A.J., enjoyed boxing and was a stock car racing enthusiast. His mother also enjoyed sports.

Don Shrubshell photo

Above, Neuner, at left, made the transition from television sportscaster to community bank president without leaving Columbia. Below from left, Jon Sundvold, Bob Costas and Brian Neuner pose for a photo after calling the play-by-play of the Missouri-Illinois men’s basketball game.

Local car dealer Gary Drewing, owner of Joe Machens Ford and Joe Machens Toyota-BMW-Scion, is a longtime Neuner family friend. Neuner’s father worked for Drewing as the parts and service director at Joe Machens until he retired in 1996.

“He was one of the best employees that’s ever worked at Joe Machens, and he helped build the dealership to where it is today,” Drewing said. “The old saying that says the acorn doesn’t fall too far from the tree is true for Brian. He is fundamentally sound because of the way he was raised and what he believes in.”

Neuner calls himself a “gym rat” who also enjoyed drama and debate. He graduated from Helias High School and entered the University of Missouri-Columbia to study broadcast journalism. For Neuner, it was the perfect combination of drama and sports.

At age 22, Neuner caught a big break when he landed his “dream job” as sports director for MU-owned KOMU-TV soon after graduating in 1988.

“I still remember the e-mail,” Neuner said, recalling the message that said he got the job on Jan. 20, 1989. It was an emotional day for Neuner. It marked the one-year anniversary of when he started dating his future wife, Candy, and it was also the day his father suffered a heart attack.

Neuner visited his father later that day in the hospital and told him the news. His father recovered from the heart attack but died about nine years later from cancer.

For the next 11 years, Neuner was a familiar face as sports anchor and play-by-play announcer. He also was a regular at local social and charitable events, helping such causes as the Children’s Miracle Network and Ronald McDonald House. He was the first local TV personality to win an Emmy, which he took in 1998. It was for a story on reclusive MU football player Ernest Blackwell, who went on a bizarre rampage in 2004 and died after being subdued by police. And one shining moment was the night he broadcast the Missouri-Illinois basketball game with Sundvold and NBC sportscaster Bob Costas.

But it started to rain on Neuner’s parade soon after a new management team at KOMU lured KMIZ-TV Sports Director Chris Gervino to the station late in 1999 and touted the duo as the dream team of local sports broadcasting.

Neuner declined to comment on specifics of his decision to leave KOMU-TV except to say stress had been building for some time and he needed to make a decision about his future. He tried to stay upbeat about the transition.

“The place was good to me, and I really enjoyed working there,” Neuner said after his resignation. “When people ask about my dream job, I have to say for me it came right out of college when I came to KOMU.”

Several months later, Tribune sports editor Kent Heitholt was slain in the Tribune parking lot after he left work during the early hours of Nov. 1, 2001. Neuner wrote a tribute to his friend, published in the Tribune, which told how the situation at KOMU had stung.

“When I left KOMU as sports director, he knew the real reason why, but I requested that he not write about it,” Neuner said. “He didn’t. Instead he wrote a column about my career, included my family and my future. I still cherish that article to this day. At a time when I was feeling lower than low, Kent picked me up with his words. I wish I had the opportunity to do the same.”

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On Wednesday morning, Neuner and three UMB employees met to discuss a recent meeting with city officials and other bankers about financing the purchase of property in south Columbia for a park and to talk about the booth at the business conference.

The approach is another lesson Neuner took from his days at KOMU, where feedback and critique happens immediately after each broadcast.

“Where are we going from here?” Neuner asked his staff. “What’s the next step?”

Neuner couldn’t see himself as a banker, but somebody else did.

When former MU business Professor Ray Lansford heard that Neuner had quit KOMU, he called his former student and UMB Bank executive Noel Shull.

Lansford, who retired from the MU faculty in 1985, watched Neuner through the years and was impressed.

“I said, ‘Here’s a young man with a lot of ability, good character, a quality person, and you need to employ him,’ ” the 86-year-old former professor recalled telling Shull.

Shull followed his professor’s advice and pestered Neuner with phone calls to come to Kansas City for an interview. Neuner saw no opportunity in banking but eventually agreed to meet with bank officials on a day when he had to be in Kansas City for another reason.

Soon after he arrived at the bank’s headquarters, Shull whisked Neuner into the office of Chief Executive Officer Crosby Kemper. Neuner couldn’t believe he was sitting in Kemper’s office interviewing for a bank job.

“I don’t understand why you are talking to me,” he said. “I’ve never even taken an accounting class. I went to J-school to avoid the numbers.”

Kemper simply asked: “Do you like to eat?” and “Do you like to entertain?” and told Neuner that the bank needed someone with “visibility in Columbia” to grow the business.

“You can do this job,” Kemper told Neuner. “We can find anybody to do the numbers. We need people to get people into the door.”

Neuner said Kemper’s persuasive pitch “changed everything” in his mind. Driving home, he remembers telling his wife over the phone, “I’m going to have to rethink this.”

Neuner mulled the opportunity over with a few close friends and discovered “a lot of links” between broadcasting and banking: asking questions, gathering information, being accurate and interacting with people.

He decided to take a shot and hired on with UMB in April 2000 as vice president of business development. About two years later, Neuner was tapped as president of local operations.

The Columbia market of UMB is part of the Southwest Missouri Region headed by Gil Trout, who said Neuner’s journalism skills have been an asset.

“He has an uncanny ability to listen, and he has a real effective ability to communicate,” he said. “He’s invested time and energy to become knowledgeable about the banking industry and our services. People do business with people they like and trust. That’s Brian.”

Neuner is quick to admit that his local name recognition and connections have helped ease his transition into banking, but he said the key goes back to building relationships.

“We find ways to connect with our customers,” he said. “We keep it conversational and trust falls into place.”

As an instructor in the MU journalism school, Neuner said he would tell broadcast students to “report without the microphone” by first getting to know somebody before doing a story.

“The same rule applies to banking,” he said.

But it goes beyond friendly chitchat. MBS Textbook Exchange Chief Executive Officer Bob Pugh said Neuner also is “tenacious about business development.”

“He’s always out looking for business, and he’s not afraid to ask for it,” he said.

Neuner said that approach has helped to grow the local business without creating a need to build branches. Along with its main branch at 1516 Chapel Hill Road, UMB has locations in the Gerbes grocery store on Paris Road and at the MU Bookstore in Brady Commons.

“We don’t have a branch on every corner, and we don’t plan to,” Neuner said.

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Neuner met his wife at a fraternity party, and they talked until 3 a.m. before he had to leave for a morning sports broadcast at KOMU. They married in 1990 and have three children.

The Neuners live on a 63-acre farm just east of Columbia in Harg. The place has horses, and the family plants a garden and cans the harvest. For Neuner, it’s a reminder of his grandparents’ farm.

Neuner’s priorities are family and his new career in banking. But beyond his unique path, it’s obvious that Neuner is not your typical banker in other ways. His eyes light up like a pinball machine when the conversation shifts to concerts and rock groups such as R.E.M., Rush, Ted Nugent and Billy Idol.

For Neuner, broadcasting was a phase that became a part of his path. He said the transition to banking freed him from the pressures and late-night hours of news broadcasting.

“I’m glad that sports doesn’t rule my life anymore,” he said. “UMB has given me an opportunity to grow in so many ways.”

Neuner said it’s been difficult to shed the label of “former KOMU sports director.” A recent encounter with the president of Boone County National Bank made him feel like he’s making progress in shaking off his former image.

“I saw Steve Erdel, and he said, ‘Hey, banker,’ ” Neuner said.

It was music to his ears.

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