CBS’ Brown Hopes Opportunities Open for Sportscasters

Like Jesse Jackson, James Brown, the sportscaster, would like to see more blacks have television play-by-play and host roles.

Besides Brown, CBS colleague Greg Gumbel and ABC’s John Saunders, most blacks with big-time network sports jobs are former athletes working as game commentators or studio analysts.

However, Brown, who along with Pat O’Brien will serve as co-hosts of CBS’ Final Four coverage Saturday and Monday, said he’s encouraged.

“There have been some positive first steps,” Brown said from his home in Washington, D.C., this week before departing for New Orleans, site of the Final Four. “I think there are going to be additional opportunities for young blacks who are willing to work hard and make sacrifices.

“I tell young blacks with sportscasting aspirations that nothing is going to be handed to them. They have to be willing to work for $50 a week, if that’s what it takes, just to get experience. They have to be willing to take gofer jobs to learn the business. They have to work hard and be prepared.”

Brown admitted that his road to the big time was a little easier than some. “I was blessed,” he said.

It helped that he is a Harvard graduate and was a two-time basketball All-American at DeMatha High in the Washington area.

Brown, 42, was raised by middle-class parents. His father, John, who died of cancer in 1977 at 47, was a prison security guard. His mother, Mary Ann, worked odd jobs to help send three of her five children, including her oldest, James, to private high schools. Four of the five graduated from college.

Brown was a heavily recruited high school senior in 1969. Besides being a basketball standout, he had a 3.7 grade-point average and was the senior class president.

He narrowed his choices to Harvard and North Carolina. After he was accepted at Harvard, UCLA offered to fly him out for a visit.

“I might have gone to UCLA, but my mother, bless her heart, said, ‘You’ve been accepted at Harvard, and that’s where you are going.’ ”

After graduating from Harvard in 1973 with a degree in American history, Brown set out to make it big in the business world.

He was working his way up the corporate ladder at Xerox when the sportscasting bug bit him in 1979. After getting a recommendation from his high school coach, Morgan Wootten, Brown was hired as a television commentator by the Washington Bullets at $250 a game.

That led to other part-time broadcasting jobs.

“I had given myself five years to land a full-time job,” Brown said. “If I didn’t, then I would devote all my energy to Corporate America.

“Well, two weeks before my five-year plan was up (in 1984), the ABC station in Washington (WJLA) hired me as a weekend sports anchorman and weekday feature reporter.”

Brown was offered a two-year contract at $50,000 the first year and $55,000 the second. He never signed the contract, and that allowed him to jump to Washington’s CBS station, WUSA, six months later.

A year later, he began doing regional NFL play-by-play for CBS, and eventually the bigger assignments starting coming.

“It wasn’t as easy as it sounds,” Brown said. “More than once, I was disappointed to the point of tears. But I continued to work hard and never gave up.”

Billy Packer, paired with play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz, will be in New Orleans for his 19th NCAA Final Four as a network commentator, his 12th with CBS.

Packer was an all-conference guard at Wake Forest, where he played on the Demon Deacon team that went to the Final Four in 1962. He was an assistant coach at Wake Forest from 1965-69 and was working in radio sales in Winston-Salem, N.C., when he began announcing Atlantic Coast Conference games in the early 1970s.

He was asked to work one NCAA tournament game for NBC in 1974, then was invited back to work more in ’75.

“I was sent down to Tuscaloosa (Ala.) for a Kentucky-Marquette game,” Packer recalled. “I was in the hotel lobby when I heard someone call out, ‘Mr. Packer.’

“Nobody called me Mr. Packer, so I was pretty startled to turn around and see Curt Gowdy. He told me he was going to be my partner, and I couldn’t believe it. I mean, Gowdy was the man back then.”

In Tuscaloosa, Packer met Marquette coach Al McGuire, not knowing that two years later he would be working with McGuire and Dick Enberg on college basketball for NBC.

Packer went to CBS in 1982 when it got the tournament.

Packer did well enough in his early-round assignments in 1975 to earn the right to work the Final Four that year with Gowdy in San Diego.

“People often ask me which Final Four is my most memorable, and I always tell them my first,” Packer said. “Maybe there has been better basketball at other Final Fours, but none have had more historical significance.”

After UCLA defeated Louisville in overtime in the semifinals, John Wooden announced his retirement. And then the Bruins went out and upset Kentucky for their 10th national championship in 12 years.

“It would be pretty hard to top that,” Packer said.

TV-Radio Notes

Mike Francesa, upset that James Brown got the co-host role over him, said on his sports talk show on New York’s WFAN that he has quit CBS and will not be a part of the network’s broadcasts this weekend. Francesa was asked to serve as a reporter at the games and declined. Francesa served in a studio host role in the earlier rounds.

KMPC and XTRA will carry CBS Radio’s Final Four game coverage, and the two all-sports stations will be devoting considerable programming to the event. KMPC has Brian Golden and Paola Boivin in New Orleans; Chet Forte and Steve Hartman are there for XTRA. . . . On April Fool’s Day the biggest fools were KMPC’s Joe McDonnell and Doug Krikorian. They announced that the Dodgers and Padres had exchanged first basemen, Eric Karros for Fred McGriff, without adding--at least at first--a reference to the date: April 1. It’s not the first time for McDonnell on April Fool’s Day. In 1990, while with KFI, he had the Lakers trading Michael Cooper and Byron Scott to the Clippers for Benoit Benjamin and Jeff Martin. The prank was no more funny or professional then than now.

Prime Ticket has decided to go with Channel 5’s Angel announcing team of Ken Wilson and Ken Brett on its Angel telecasts, which begin on June 2. . . . Prime Ticket’s “Angel Clubhouse,” with host Alan Massengale, will return for its second season Sunday at 7 p.m. . . . Channel 5 will televise the Dodgers’ opener against the Florida Marlins on Monday at 11 a.m.

The 56th running of the Santa Anita Derby will be shown, delayed, on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” Saturday at 4:30 p.m. Also on “Wide World” Saturday will be the first part of a three-week run for “Superstars.” . . . Ann Liguori’s weekly “Sports Innerview” program, formerly on SportsChannel, will make its debut on Prime Ticket on Monday at 7 p.m., when Ligouri’s guest will be Pete Rose. The show will be on at 6 p.m. on ensuing Mondays. . . . Baseball double feature: On Channel 28 Tuesday at 9 p.m., “Frontline” will examine baseball’s problems. Following at 10 p.m. will be a more positive show, “Mickey Mantle: The American Dream Comes to Life,” an award-wining documentary produced by Lew Rothgeb and Richard Hall.

Al Downing, formerly with KABC, has been talking about a job with XTRA. . . . USC graduate David Kelly, the 25-year-old son of former Cleveland Browns running back Leroy Kelly who has been doing high school sports for KTIP in Porterville the past 1 1/2 years, has been hired by KGEO in Bakersfield to be the play-by-play announcer for the Bakersfield Dodgers. . . . MTV’s “Rock N’ Jock Softball Challenge,” taped in January at Long Beach with major league stars and entertainment personalties participating, will be shown Saturday at noon.

“This Week in Baseball,” a syndicated show with Mel Allen, returns for its 17th season this weekend, but on a new station. Channel 4 will show this season’s first edition Sunday at 3 p.m. It will include a tribute to Red Barber, who died at 84 last October, as well as a musical tribute to the late Steve Olin and Tim Crews. . . . On Channel 2 opposite “This Week in Baseball” on Sunday will be an Al McGuire Final Four special. . . . ESPN will enter the pay-per-view business in September, with ABC as its partner for college football. ABC was involved last season with Showtime Event Television, which decided to quit the partnership and concentrate on pay-per-view boxing.