Thom Brennaman returns to national broadcasting

Four years after Thom Brennaman lost his local job with the Cincinnati Reds and his national jobs with Fox Sports, he’s returning to the national broadcasting scene with Nexstar’s The CW. Brennaman lost those jobs after a homophobic slur on a hot mic on a Reds’ broadcast. He’ll debut on The CW calling Oregon State’s home game against Idaho State (part of the network’s acquisition of Pac-12/Pac-2 rights) on Aug. 31, but will mostly work on their Raycom Sports-produced ACC package. Andrew Marchand of The Athletic broke that news Sunday:

Marchand’s piece on this has comments from Brennaman on his return, plus support for him from Bob Costas, Outsports’ Cyd Ziegler (who wrote his own piece in support of this ), and more. Here are some of those comments from Marchand’s article:

“There are no words to describe how grateful I am that they’re rolling the dice,” Brennaman told The Athletic. “They don’t have to do this.”

…“Neither Thom nor anyone else denies that he had a serious misstep,” Costas said. “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.”

“I pumped my fist in the air and said, ‘Finally!’” Zeigler said. “Somebody gave this guy a chance that he deserved. I’m so proud of The CW.”

It’s been a long road to this point for Brennaman . The son of Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Brennaman, he started his own radio career while attending Ohio University in the 1980s, then called Reds and Cubs games before being part of the young group of play-by-play voices there at the 1994 launch of the NFL on Fox. He called MLB and college football games for Fox and Big Ten Network as well, and worked locally with the Arizona Diamondbacks from 1998-2006 and then the Reds from 2007-20.

But after that August 19, 2020 slur , Brennaman was quickly pulled from Fox’s NFL broadcasts. And he took criticism for his initial apology showing his ignorance of the ways that slur has been used. He took time off the air with the Reds as well and met with LGBTQ+ broadcasters and activists, then officially resigned his Reds’ role that September.

Since then, Brennaman has done some remote broadcasting for the Roberto Clemente League in Puerto Rico, and some Cincinnati-area high school sports broadcasting and a daily show for Chatterbox Sports. As per Marchand’s piece, he also continued to reach out to the LGBTQ+ community in Cincinnati and nationally. And he told Marchand that was “mainly about listening to people.” That fits with what he told AA in August 2022 around the launch of his daily show :

“All I can do is what I’ve tried to do over the past two years, that’s learn and grow from the ignorant word I used in a flippant sort of way. And really, through my experiences and time with people in the gay community, I’ve learned a great deal.

“All you can do is the best you can do, and I’ve done that for two years, and I continue to learn and grow. I’m a better man today than the guy who sat up there in August of 2020, I’ll be a better broadcaster today than I was in August 2020 because of this whole experience and this whole journey. All I can do is ask people for forgiveness, a little bit of grace, and a second chance.”

Brennaman now has that second chance on a national scale with The CW. We’ll see what he does with it.

[ The Athletic ]

The post Thom Brennaman returns to national broadcasting with CFB games on The CW appeared first on Awful Announcing .