A Feisty Musburger Bounces Back

Brent Musburger has a busy weekend coming up. What else is new?

Five months gone from CBS in the rancorous April Fools Night firing, Musburger starts his work as a college football play-by-play voice on ABC’s Texas Tech-at-Ohio State telecast Saturday. He then flies back to Connecticut to appear as a special guest on ESPN’s opening National Football League pregame football show. It’s a novelty one-shot deal, a bit of a coup for ESPN to have Musburger on as it goes head-to-head against the season-opening pregame shows of NBC and CBS’ “NFL Today,” the show over which Musburger presided for more than a decade.

Musburger has a chuckle or two at the idea of upstaging even in a small way the heavily promoted debut of the new “NFL Today” lineup. Is the Mus still bitter about the CBS bosses who fired him? In a word, yes.

So he arranged to observe the Sunday pregame cable show hosted by his friend Chris Berman and agreed to go on for ESPN, a kind of subsidiary of ABC. “I wanted to see their operation; I wanted to see the games. Some guys say they don’t watch sports after they are out of it. That’s pure bullflowers.”

He intends to go out to Las Vegas on a Sunday to see the betting operation there. “I want to see how much of that supposed hot action is hype and how much is real. And I want to go to the football stadiums I haven’t seen.”

Musburger, 51, bounced back from his CBS split to sign quickly enough a six-year contract at ABC worth a reported $11 million. It is astounding that he--or any sportscaster--can make that kind of money, but that is the crazy nature of the business.

It’s just as nutty that Musburger’s firing received so much attention in the public prints and on the airwaves. This is a kid from Montana, who worked one year as a minor-league umpire, went into newspaper work, then radio, before he grabbed attention as the CBS Sports lead personality who, for a time, was seen on just about every CBS event short of the tiddledywinks championships. His firing got overkill attention because newspapers are as wrapped up in what appears on screen as the most fervent TV junkie.

If Musburger acquired a big head at CBS--he, a former newspaperman, roasted me one night for some criticism I had written--he may have gained a little wisdom from the experience. “I was lucky,” he said, “that at the time of the firing (at the NCAA championships) in Denver, my whole family was there and I had them to rally around. When something like that happens, you appreciate the meaning of the word ‘family.’ ”

He said, “When something like that happens, you don’t miss the work so much as the social life. All my close friends were in the company. I knew people in the company better than my family.”

The family is his wife Arlene, sons Blake, 20, and Scott, 16. “After the firing I’ve had months of being together with them in our homes in Georgia, Montana and Connecticut. I would advise everybody on the fast track not to walk away from family. The big ride could end at any time.”

Musburger showed class in his swan-song commentary during the NCAA final when he said he had had a great run and that he didn’t want to take away from the game. A few days later, though, he was on the air bitterly taking shots at his CBS bosses, Neal Pilson and Ted Shaker.

This brought ridicule upon him from many quarters. He doesn’t see it that way. “I began seeing those unattributed quotes in some papers saying how difficult I had been to work with. When power plays go down in the corporate world, that’s the way it is done. They lied to me. I believe in being honest.”

He is a team player all the way. You can almost see the new ABC logo tattooed on his chest. He debuted in the summer hosting a cockamamie sports award show, did some minor horse races and the Little League World Series. He talked enthusiastically about always wanting to do the Little League World Series. Though some might scoff at that, he was probably sincere because he is at heart a jock’s jock. “Sports are my life,” he says.

“It’s starting over for me now. I feel I am very lucky to be at ABC to do what I most enjoy doing -- covering sports on TV. I did news, but I know more about sports than anything else, so I am more comfortable with it. I won’t have the NFL on Sunday, of course, but I am deeply involved with colleges. I enjoy being in stadiums.”

There are times, he agrees, when you can get a little tired of it all, of the talk about big contracts and the like. It is obscene, for example, that the San Francisco Giants can ask taxpayers to pay the freight to build them a stadium and then turn around and heap an average of $3.75 million a year on slugger Kevin Mitchell.

“Sure,” Musburger said, “you can wonder about (Jose) Canseco getting $5 million, but I like to see the big guy swing. I like the joy of fans reacting to their teams.”