Champions 2026: James Brown

A few months after earning his bachelor’s degree from Harvard, James Brown sat sobbing in the bedroom he shared as a child with three brothers and a young nephew, unexpectedly out of a job — and a dream.

Taken by the Atlanta Hawks in the fourth round of the 1974 NBA Draft, Brown went to the team’s training camp in Savannah, Ga., uncertain of whether he could make it in the league. Undersized as a 6-foot-5 center at DeMatha High, he established himself as an elite prospect, passing up an offer from blue blood North Carolina before choosing Harvard at his parents’ behest.

He learned to play facing the basket as a slashing small forward. As a pro, he’d have to change positions again, proving he could shoot well enough to play guard. Still on the roster with only a few cuts remaining, Brown had grown optimistic, buoyed by encouraging compliments from the Hawks’ electric young star, Pete Maravich.

When Hawks coach Cotton Fitzsimmons summoned him to his hotel room a few days before the team’s first preseason game, Brown expected good news.

Fitzsimmons cut him.

Stunned and despondent, Brown returned to his northeast Washington, D.C., neighborhood, where he dreaded encountering the families he’d grown up around. When he ran into friends who thought they’d seen his last name in Hawks box scores, he had to explain that J. Brown was John Brown, the Hawks’ first-round pick.

“That just rubbed it in,” he recalled during a recent interview in his Bethesda, Md., home. “I hid in the house for two weeks.”

A lifetime later, Brown often reflects on the unforeseen way that painful cut shaped him.

The Hawks’ kiss-off forced him to take a crack at a sales job at Xerox, where he developed skills he’d use in ways he never intended or imagined. When he shined as a guest on a local TV talk show, it led to an audition and then a job moonlighting as a color analyst on Washington Bullets games. That led to a full-time spot on the air at the local CBS affiliate, which led to national network roles at CBS Sports and then Fox and then CBS again.

Inducted into both major sports media halls of fame, Brown has hosted network NFL studio shows for 31 years running, helmed a record 10 Super Bowl pregame shows, won three sports Emmys, delivered stories for “60 Minutes” and filled in as anchor on the “CBS Evening News.”

“When I stopped to really examine why I failed [to make an NBA roster], the net-net was I knew I didn’t work as hard to stay on top as I did to get to the top,” Brown said. “I would never make that mistake again of not paying the price to develop and stay ahead of the game. That’s been my M.O. in everything I do, going back all the way to being cut.

“I make sure that I’m prepared.”

Get into a deep discussion with Brown about his path, approach or philosophy and he likely will recite an applicable Bible verse.

Seventeen years ago, he was ordained as a nondenominational Christian minister. He has worked as a youth pastor, preached to vast congregations and spoken at events hosted by Jesuit-led universities and “fire-and-brimstone” Baptist churches.

On a recent Monday morning, Christian music streamed loudly enough from the kitchen that he had to nudge it down a click to comfortably converse in a nearby sitting room.

Asked about the fortuitousness of the unlikely, and at times unplanned, path that led him from DeMatha, Harvard and Xerox, Brown closed his eyes to ponder.

“It goes back to scripture,” Brown said. “Proverbs 3:5 and 6 says, ‘Trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Lean not into your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge him. And he will direct your path.’”

Brown then explained the uncertainty he felt when CBS lost rights to the NBA and the NFL, the two leagues that accounted for the bulk of his better assignments. Early into a pivot toward more mindful spirituality, he turned to that passage from the Bible.

“I was a rookie in the faith, to mix a sports metaphor,” Brown said. “But I knew Proverbs 3:5 and 6. I said, ‘Well God, you told me that if I trust you, you would guide me. I don’t know what I’m going to do next. I have no idea. But I know what you said.’

“So that’s what I was standing on.”

Introduction to TV

Brown’s NBA dream seemed dead after the Hawks cut him, but basketball delivered a valuable consolation prize: a Harvard degree that opened doors. He quickly landed his first job with a city agency. A few months later, well-connected alum Clifford Alexander, the chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, set him up with an interview at IBM.

Brown botched that opportunity badly, showing up at the famously conservative company’s offices wearing a plaid blue suit, velvet bow tie and thick-soled shoes. He didn’t get the job, but he learned a lesson. He dressed more appropriately for an interview with Xerox and landed the job.

He’d been in sales at Xerox for about six months when Boston Celtics GM Red Auerbach invited him to camp with the Celtics. When Brown asked for a leave of absence from Xerox, an early mentor agreed to support him — but only if he agreed to put basketball behind him for good if it didn’t work out.

Brown went through grueling workouts on outdoor courts, where Auerbach watched to see which players would trade scraped knees and elbows to secure a loose ball. He didn’t make the roster, but Auerbach offered to find him a slot in Europe, suggesting he could make it if he spent another season honing his game.

Brown was tempted, but a role at the end of an NBA bench didn’t pay much more than he’d make in sales at Xerox, where his bosses seemed prepared to fast-track him. Though his parents never pressured him to stop playing, he saw his father work days as a prison guard and nights and weekends as a taxi driver and handyman for years. Brown received student aid at Harvard, but the school didn’t award athletic scholarships.

“My mother and father, God bless them, were working hard to send me to school to set the tone for my siblings,” Brown said. “So I said, ‘You know what? Let me just go get started in the game of life.’ And I gave it my best.”

At Xerox, Brown sold copiers and other office equipment to government, education and medical clients in the D.C. area. Affable, with the competitive drive of a recently displaced athlete, Brown found sales suited him.

He had about five years at Xerox when he was invited to discuss his playing days on the local station that televised Washington Bullets games. The interview went so well that the host suggested he pursue a vacant analyst’s spot on Bullets broadcasts.

Brown was invited to return the next week to simulate a halftime interview he’d have to do if he got the job. Remembering the pledge he made to never again go into an opportunity underprepared, Brown began prepping. At Xerox, he learned to craft sales presentations around what distinguished his products from his competitors’. Brown remembered that he played against Phil Chenier, the Bullets’ All-Star guard, in a tournament in Ann Arbor while both were in college.

Brown asked Chenier to join him for the audition.

“They didn’t ask me to bring somebody,” Brown said. “This time I prepared to take advantage of the opportunity, unlike when I didn’t prepare properly to win a spot on a team. When I came in with Phil Chenier, that was a shocker. ‘Wow. The guy’s got the team’s star.’ It was awesome. I got the job.”

Brown went to work learning the role. A radio host who was the runner-up for the job generously offered to coach him, teaching him to prepare charts with stats and notes on every player and explaining the importance of timing in the give-and-take between play-by-play and analysis.

Brown immediately took to it, thrilled to be back in the game. A month into the season, BET hired him to call college games. He picked up assignments for syndicator TVS and cable network USA.

He did it all as a moonlighting gig, heading to the arena after his day at Xerox for weeknight home games and burning vacation days to join the team on the road. Though he continued to hit his sales numbers, his boss tired of his high-profile side hustle.

Brown realized he’d pushed the limits during a West Coast road trip that he took even though he had an important presentation to deliver at Xerox’s offices the morning after the swing finished in Seattle. He booked a red-eye, planning to go directly to the office after landing at 6 a.m.

When the game went to overtime, he thought he was cooked.

“When it was over, I went like a bat out of a cave to get to the airport,” Brown said. “They were about to close the door on the flight. And I’m running and screaming and they let me get on. I get there exhausted, and not really well prepared. I’m sure the boss noticed.”

On the outs at Xerox, he moved to Eastman Kodak for 18 months before taking a job with a minority-owned marketing firm that promised more flexibility. He added even more sports work, taking freelance jobs for the local CBS affiliate.

Brown was at his desk early one afternoon when a producer from the station phoned with an urgent request. The station’s sports director, Glenn Brenner, was sick. His backup, Frank Herzog, was on assignment. They wanted Brown to come in and deliver the nightly sports report.

He’d never been behind an anchor desk. But the producer promised he’d make it effortless for him, writing the script that he would read from a teleprompter. Brown headed to the studio.

The directions were simple. He was to read from the teleprompter until he saw a line of asterisks, then look down at a monitor on the desk, where he’d see the highlights that he’d describe.

Brown took his seat on the set. When the time for his report came, he sat, puzzled, as the anchors chatted, waiting for him to join in. Eventually, he caught on and began. When he came to the asterisk, Brown looked down for the Bullets’ highlights, only to see the top of his own head. The highlights weren’t running. Brown ad-libbed for an interminable span before moving on to the hockey highlights. By the time he was done, the segment had run long.

A director gave him the cut sign, but he’d never seen one before. He kept going. The camera pulled back, but Brown didn’t recognize that signal either, craning to stay in the shot. He eventually realized what they wanted and threw it back to the anchors.

“It was a disaster,” Brown said. “But they gave me an opportunity to learn from it — and do it at the No. 1 station in the market. I butchered it. But I got better.”

At his day jobs, many who worked with him were perplexed by his infatuation with TV roles that paid far less than he’d make in the corporate world: $250 a game to do the Bullets and even less for other assignments.

“The entrepreneur who owned the marketing firm said, ‘JB, you’ve got the chance to own your own business. Why are you still doing this broadcasting thing?’” Brown said. “I had a lot of people ask me that question. They said I was wasting my time. But I had the passion and the drive and felt I was getting so close.”

Networks come calling

He got the chance to transition fully out of corporate America in 1983, when Herzog jumped to the ABC affiliate as sports director and offered him the slot as a reporter and weekend anchor. Brown took the job, but continued to work syndicated college games. That’s how he caught the eye of CBS, which was looking for talent for its newly acquired March Madness package. He parlayed his performance on those games into occasional NBA assignments.

Brown was with the ABC affiliate for about six months when the CBS station brought him back, offering him a feature-oriented nightly role on a 5 p.m. news show.

“Channel 9 gave me the opportunity to learn and fall on my face covering all type of sports,” Brown said. “I had to cover the hockey team. I had to learn smaller sports in the summer. It served me well, because I was like that cereal commercial: ‘Give it to Mikey. He’ll try anything.’”

When CBS hired Brown full time in 1984, that welcoming, curious approach served him well. He became a fixture on the network’s weekend sports anthology show, “CBS Sports Spectacular,” covering speed skating from Germany, water polo from the Pan Am Games and the Tour de France.

“Channel 9 gave me the opportunity to learn and fall on my face covering all type of sports. I had to cover the hockey team. I had to learn smaller sports in the summer. It served me well, because I was like that cereal commercial: ‘Give it to Mikey. He’ll try anything.’”

—  James Brown

Still, Brown’s primary role at CBS was in basketball, as an analyst on college games and on the network’s No. 2 NBA crew. While that role was comfortable, it offered no chance for advancement.

“James, you’re doing good,” he recalled CBS Executive Producer Ted Shaker telling him. “But let me be clear. When Dr. J or Larry Bird retire, those are big names. If they want to do games, they’re the analyst. You need to learn to do play-by-play. “

To do that at CBS, Brown had to transition to football. His first game was in 1987, paired with fellow Harvard alum Dan Jiggetts on what would become the first all-Black announcing team to do an entire NFL season. They opened with the moribund Tampa Bay Bucs against the dismal Atlanta Falcons.

“Thank goodness it was only being telecast to the truck down in the tunnel,” Brown said, “and maybe the local Piggly Wiggly store around the corner.”

Though Brown recalls preparing “assiduously,” his performance included two memorable goofs: excitedly chronicling running back James Wilder’s gallop across the 40-, 50-, 55- and 60-yard lines, and then mistakenly relying on a malfunctioning stadium clock that showed 8 minutes, 99 seconds.

As with his flub in his first time at an anchor desk, Brown survived and improved. When he returned to college basketball, it was in a play-by-play role. He called NFL games on CBS for seven seasons, a run that ended in 1994 after the network lost the NFL package to newly launched Fox Sports, a stunning blow that followed the loss of NBA rights in 1990.

Brown worried about his future at CBS. A once flourishing sports division was sure to shrink precipitously with its rights winnowed down to college basketball, SEC football, golf, U.S. Open tennis and an anthology show.

While CBS Sports retrenched, Fox expanded. Founding Fox Sports CEO David Hill hired CBS producer Ed Goren, who then picked off some of the best on-air and production talent from his old employer’s roster, including the iconic announcing team of John Madden and Pat Summerall and studio analyst Terry Bradshaw.

Excited as they were about a first-of-its-kind, hourlong studio show, they still hadn’t hired a host for it when June rolled around. Goren was nearing panic when his wife, Patty, phoned to say she’d gotten an unusual call from Brown, who wanted to congratulate him and pass along a message: Don’t forget your friends.

Hill was shooting down every CBS candidate at that point, worried that they’d be perceived as “CBS West.” Goren argued that Brown was far enough down the totem pole at the network that viewers soon would forget he worked there. He convinced Hill to give Brown’s work a look.

“I had seen so many tapes that my VHS machine was about worn out,” Hill recalled. “But I put it on and said — ‘That’s it.’ That was it. He looks the part. He has an everyman quality, but a bit professorial. Smart as shit. I said, ‘That’s him.’ JB was the first and only choice.”

Brown meshed perfectly with the outsized cast that they’d assembled ahead of him: Bradshaw, the swashbuckling, Super Bowl-winning quarterback; Howie Long, the defensive end turned action figure; and Jimmy Johnson, the ubersuccessful ex-coach.

They had electric potential. But they needed a ground wire. Brown, was — as Hill says through an Aussie accent — “perrrfect,” a traffic cop who kept the dialogue flowing without colliding, often curious but ever in control.

“People didn’t realize how good he was,” Goren said. “I wanted likability in that role. And I couldn’t have done any better than finding somebody like JB, where the likability comes right through that TV set, into your home.

“The reason we didn’t have a damned host was because we didn’t have anybody auditioning that had the kind of presence that was necessary. JB had that presence.”

With a noon starting time, an eye-catching presentation and a seamless cast shepherded by the unflappable Brown, Fox broke from the gate as the No. 1-rated NFL pregame show, a slot it has held for each week since.

Brown’s profile rocketed, in sports and beyond. He appeared as himself on episodes of “The Simpsons,” “King of the Hill” and “Married with Children.” Put in charge of programming for the network, Hill cast him as host of a weekly funniest home videos knockoff.

He filled the downtime between NFL seasons working for HBO, first as a host for big-event boxing and then as a correspondent for the hard-hitting magazine show “Real Sports.” Though Brown hadn’t reported news before, then-HBO Sports President Ross Greenburg saw potential. The day before big fights, Brown would corner him for 20 to 30 minutes, probing him about each fighter and the machinations behind making the fight.

“He was a pro’s pro,” Greenburg said. “He just studied his ass off. He was a remarkable gatherer of information and was very at ease with the camera in front of him. And because he was the nicest man in sports television, he was remarkable as a host. Everyone loved him. You could sense the chemistry that he developed with whoever we put next to him.”

Heading into the final year of his Fox Sports contract in 2005, Brown wanted to extend, but at better terms.

“I wasn’t asking for anything ridiculous; just wanted it to be fair,” Brown said. “I was low man on the totem pole financially, but I understood. I had to prove myself. It’s all about being a good team player. But my colleagues, once or twice during the time of their deals, were always able to bump up. I just waited for mine.

“We had a great thing going. I will delicately say, I would never have left the show and wasn’t thinking of leaving the show.”

When Brown’s agent, Sandy Montag, approached Fox Sports contract negotiator Larry Jones about upping his client’s salary, he was told “the bank is closed,” Brown said. He went into the NFL season with the clock on his contract ticking down. With Brown still unsigned come October, Montag phoned CBS Sports then-President Sean McManus to test other options.

“All I can tell you is when Sandy Montag called me up and said there may be a chance for you to get JB back to CBS Sports, I leapt at the opportunity,” said McManus, who retired as the division’s chairman in 2024. “I made it my job to make sure that he could come back to CBS in a role that he wanted and we wanted.

“I take a lot of pride in a lot of what we’ve done at CBS Sports. But bringing JB back is right at the top of the list.”

McManus met with Brown and his wife, Dorothy, pitching the merits of a return to CBS as host of “NFL Today.” Not only would the network clear the bar on money, it was willing to consider him for assignments on “60 Minutes” and the evening news. His weekend commute to New York would be far easier than the trek to L.A., allowing him to spend more time with his mother, whose health had failed.

“I take a lot of pride in a lot of what we’ve done at CBS Sports. But bringing JB back is right at the top of the list.”

—  Sean McManus, former CBS Sports president

With November approaching, Brown agreed to return to CBS.

They managed to keep it quiet until January, when Hill and Goren began asking why he hadn’t negotiated an extension. In Seattle for a playoff game, Goren coaxed Brown out of their hotel for a walk.

“We’re going uphill and downhill, walking and talking, until I go, ‘JB, what the heck is going on here?’” Goren recalled. Brown told him Fox wasn’t “stepping up to a reasonable number.” When Goren heard what the number was, he was relieved. He knew the network could get there.

“Now we can cut this walk short,” Goren said. “We’ve settled everything.”

“There’s one problem,” Brown said. “I signed a document with CBS in October.”

Goren was furious. They didn’t speak for about a year. Eventually, Goren sent Brown a hand-written note, explaining why the move, and its secrecy, cut him deeply.

“JB was more than just a host or play-by-play guy,” Goren said. “He was a friend.”

They mended fences at an awards dinner, when Goren told Brown he’d come to understand the decision, realizing it was best for him, his family and his broader aspirations. Hill, who also was at the event, reached the same conclusion.

“JB and Dorothy walked through this function with 500 people, and it was like people getting up to touch the hem of his robe,” Hill said. “I thought: ‘This is JB. It’s not living in an apartment [in L.A.]. What Sean was offering JB was something I never could — and something that would be so good for JB.’

“Listen, life happens. To me, it was a natural progression. This was something JB wanted to do, and it was better for him.”

‘I want to give it all’

CBS has rotated a dozen former players and coaches through its “NFL Today” show in the 20 years since Brown joined the program, tinkering with the alchemy that makes a successful pregame show entertaining and informative.

Brown is the singular constant.

“He’s so welcoming to everyone,” said David Berson, who joined CBS Sports as an executive vice president in 2011 and was elevated to CEO when McManus retired two years ago. “It could be to the fans who are watching at home. It could be to the teammates that share the desk with him. It could be to the cameramen in the studio. The researchers that he works with. The clients that pop into the studio on occasion to see how things work and take pictures. He’s just so welcoming and epitomizes class.

“We do research on our people, potential people [we might hire] and other people in the industry. So there’s certainly research here. But you don’t need to be an expert to understand the connection JB has with fans and with his teammates. It jumps off the screen.”

The network has made good on its promise to flex his news chops. Three years after returning to CBS, Brown saw his first opportunity to test himself on “60 Minutes.” The show was in the running to secure the much-anticipated first interview with exiled quarterback and admitted dog-fighter Michael Vick after he was released from prison.

CBS had another reporter assigned to the story, but Brown asked for a shot at it. He met Vick at Leavenworth to make his case.

Told that other outlets offered to pay Vick for his appearance, Brown counseled him not to accept them, warning him that viewers would question his veracity and sincerity if he did so. The 15-minute interview, in which Brown skeptically pressed Vick, made for riveting television.

CBS Sports also gave Brown the opportunity to weigh in on social issues that are important to him through two-minute commentaries that he writes and delivers, often at the end of “NFL Today.”

“When I look back,” Brown said, “I hope this platform is one that I’ve used meaningfully, carefully, lovingly, encouragingly to all.”

At 75, Brown readily concedes that “you don’t do this forever.” But he says he’s not close to being ready to spend afternoons by the pool in his manicured backyard, joking that he never learned to swim.

The topic reminded him of a harrowing CBS News assignment that sent him to Pakistan with televangelist Marilyn Hickey, who was still preaching at 86.

“I’m not being dismissive of that which I’m doing, because I love what I’m doing,” Brown said. “But Marilyn Hickey, before she passed away, people were asking her why she didn’t retire. She said: Retirement is not in the Bible. Whatever gifts and talents I’ve been given, I want to use them to the fullest. When it’s my time to go, I don’t want people looking over, as the proverbial story is, to see all that talent that was unused in the grave.

“I want to give it all. Whatever that may be.”