James Brown Talks Football, Faith, and His Career


Listen

On this episode of ZUCKER, Harvard basketball superstar and CBS Sports and News broadcaster James Brown joins host Andrew Zucker to talk about football, faith, and his career. Brown discusses how he chose Harvard, what his experience at the school was like, and how he transitioned from corporate America to sports broadcasting, among other topics.

On what his faith means to him: My faith is foundational to everything I do. I often tell people that broadcasting is my avocation, my faith is my vocation. That is fundamental to it. Now I wasn't hired by CBS to prosthelytize, but it is who I am and what they get is—what I hope has served me well over all these years—is an objective of delivering excellence every timeout, but it is with the understanding that the excellence and the platform—the foundation upon which I stand—is my faith.

On calling different sports throughout his career: I’ve been blessed to do a range of sports, because I wanted to show that I had the ability to do, again, all sports and not limiting myself. Verne Lundquist, he was the one who told me never turn down an opportunity to do a new sport even if you don’t know it intensely. Do the studying, do the homework, know the rules, know how to pronounce the names, and the same mechanics that work for you in the sport that you know will work for you in the sport that you are not that familiar with. And he was right, and I’m very very thankful for that.

On whether Tom Brady is the greatest player of this era: I don’t see how you can argue that…again if you use championship rings as the measurement and what he's meant to the team without having played with a bunch of superstars consistently throughout his career. So you’re hearing, if you will, some of the elements by which I’m judging that that is accurate for this era. I think it is without question that he deserves that.