At the age of 45, Fox TV sports broadcaster James Brown’s athletic and television career has included the stuff of which dream’s are made.
A standout among schoolboy basketball players in Washington, DC, Brown attended Harvard University on a academic scholarship and captained the Crimson basketball team as a senior at Cambridge, MA. he graduated from Harvard in 1973 with a degree in American government.
Brown was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks of the National Basketball Association and the Denver Rockets of the now-defunct American Basketball Association. After he was cut he become a familiar face at college and National Basketball Association games as an announcer.
He came to the FOX NFL Sunday anchor desk from CBS Sports, where he spent nine years as a college basketball analyst and NFL play-by-play announcer, as well as covering track and field at the 1992 Olympic Games and downhill skiing at the 1994 Olympic Games. He also shared in reporting duties for “CBS Sports Saturday/Sunday” and announced the Emmy Award-winning “Let Me Be Brave: A Special Climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro.”
Brown has hosted several pay-per-view boxing events and is a regular contributor to Home Box Office’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” and now hosts a jazz show for Black Entertainment Television.
In recent interview with Black Issues in Higher Education president William E. Cox and senior writer Ronald A. Taylor, he talked about athletics, scholarship and broadcasting.
What impact did Arthur Ashe’s achievements have on you as a young adult involved in athletics?
