A veteran TV news anchor and former University of Alabama football player has died, police in Alabama and the station he worked for said.

Christopher Sign’s work “will serve forever as a hallmark of decency, honesty and journalist integrity,” said WBMA-TV Vice President and General Manager Eric Land.

The station said Sign had turned down a national network position to return to Hoover in 2017 after 13 years in Phoenix, Arizona.

He made the decision for his wife and their three sons, the station’s obituary said.

“That decision put him in a place where he could see his boys off to school in the mornings, watch them play baseball in the evenings, and take them fishing on the weekends,” it said.

Sign had started at the station, also called ABC 33/40, as a reporter in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Sign played football at Alabama in the 1990s under coach Gene Stallings.

Hoover police told Al.com that the death is being investigated as an apparent suicide. Sign was found dead at his home Saturday morning, Hoover police told Al.com.