BRENNAMAN DID HIS IMPORTANT LIFE WORK AND DESERVES A SECOND CHANCE
His gay slur four years ago will keep turning off some listeners, but when he returns as CW’s national college football voice, let’s realize he paid a difficult price and belongs behind a microphone
Thom Brennaman was a victim of social media, destroyed by the slaughter and the suffocation. I call him a “victim” when, in truth, he was worthy of a lengthy layoff from broadcasting sports. Should he have lost his career when he referred to Kansas City as “one of the (homophobic slur) capitals of the world,” when his game microphone was on and broiling?
No, he still has a classic voice that brings verve to what he’s covering. He needed to sit and study inside the gay community. He needed years to spend with his wife and kids. He would move on without the Cincinnati Reds, in a city where his father’s booth skills are legendary, and without Fox Sports. In due time, because he did appropriate work and began “listening to people,” Brennaman deserved another chance.
He has it, almost four years later. The CW is not ESPN or CBS or NBC or Fox, but beginning Aug. 31, he will call national college football games involving the Atlantic Coast Conference and what’s left of the Pac-12. He almost doesn’t think he deserves the shot, which wholeheartedly means he deserves it. “There are no words to describe how grateful I am that they’re rolling the dice. They don’t have to do this,” Brennaman told The Athletic, which broke the story.
What he learned is how disgraceful the media business can be toward those who make a mistake. Never mind his work behind Joe Buck on Fox’s football and baseball coverage. Never mind how he replaced dad Marty in an old Midwestern town. When a bigger name screws up, let’s bury him FOREVER. He noticed his colleagues dropped nasty posts about him, with all the other dolts, instead of improving their own inferior work. He realized agents, some of the worst people in the industry, ignored him like he never existed. And forget about calling major-league teams, who would prefer to have robots and A.I. creatures.
He made a terrible error, thinking he was off the air. He deserved to sweat and ponder his life. He did not deserve to hang.
There will be viewers who won’t tune in. Once he apologizes formally, as Brennaman has done for years, folks might adopt bigger issues such as who wins the presidential election. Cyd Zeigler, who runs a notable LGBTQ+ site, celebrated the move by saying, “I pumped my fist in the air and said, ‘Finally!’ Somebody gave this guy a chance that he deserved. I’m so proud of The CW.”
And for those continuing to seethe anyway, listen to Bob Costas, who went to bat for Brennaman in speaking to his future bosses. He told The Athletic, “Neither Thom nor anyone else denies he had a serious misstep. A misstep for which some consequence would have been appropriate. But the price he has paid is beyond disproportionate. Especially when you consider that he had a fine reputation prior to the incident, and took every proper step to make amends subsequent to it. His return to the booth is overdue and I am sure the audience will be happy to hear his voice again.”
Some bad comedians will keep focusing on how he responded in the fifth inning on Aug. 19, 2020. Brennaman turned Nick Castellanos into an everlasting meme when he said, “I made a comment earlier tonight that I guess went out over the air that I am deeply ashamed of. If I have hurt anyone out there, I can’t tell you how much I say from the bottom of my heart that I am so very, very sorry. I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith as there’s a drive into deep left field by Castellanos, that will be a home run, and so that will make it a 4-0 ballgame.”
It was an awful reaction in the worst time of his 60 years. Did anyone think about how Brennaman has survived since then? “When you’re living moment to moment, hour to hour, day by day, there will be times when you start to go a little bit dark and you start to say, ‘Why me?’ ” he said. Did the social media marauders give pause?
Why? They could have fun with Thom when, chances are, they have done as poorly in life if not worse. When I appeared eight years on ESPN, I was subjected to insanity online — sometimes from my own colleagues — and it became grotesque later, in a case that never was reported properly by any form of media. The Athletic, when writer Bob Kravitz did solid homework that supported me, refused to run an entire profile. You do realize how creepy and sinister the business has become. But what I did was take a job and then took another. Today, I love writing for Substack and reveal what most safe-and-sorry outlets never would run.
When he returns in Corvallis, where Oregon State hosts Idaho State, Brennaman should gaze at the football field and let his voice boom throughout CW’s territory. In Chicago, where he broadcasted for the Cubs, I knew him for his voice. In the future, I also will know him for his voice.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.