The trajectory from college basketball player to sports broadcasting institution is not, as it happens, a straight line — though in the case of James Brown, the longtime CBS studio host, it does seem to have been drawn with a certain inevitability.
Mr. Brown, who will be inducted into the National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame in 2026, has spent the better part of five decades moving through the American sports-media complex in a manner that suggests less ambition than accumulation. Born in Washington in 1951, he played basketball at Harvard (three-time second-team All-Ivy, for those keeping score at home), was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks in the fourth round in 1973, and then, when professional basketball did not quite work out, did what many former athletes of that era did: he went into sales.
For seven years, Mr. Brown sold products for Xerox and Eastman Kodak, which is not typically the origin story one associates with a Sports Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award. (But then, origin stories rarely are.)
His broadcasting career began modestly — color analyst for the Washington Bullets in 1978, weekend sports anchor in Washington — before CBS came calling in 1983. What followed was a methodical ascent through the network sports ecosystem: college basketball, the NFL, the Olympics in Barcelona and Lillehammer, and eventually the studio desk at Fox, where he helped launch "Fox NFL Sunday" in 1994.
He returned to CBS in 2006 as host of "The NFL Today," a position he has held, with characteristic steadiness, ever since.
Along the way, Mr. Brown became an ordained minister, published a book on faith and family, and joined the ownership group of the Washington Nationals — a portfolio that suggests either restlessness or a very particular kind of ambition.
He has now covered 10 Super Bowls for CBS. The 11th, presumably, will not surprise him.
Original story published in sportsbusinessjournal.com: "Champions 2026: James Brown timeline"