O’Donnell: Brent Musburger finally lands Rozelle Award from Pro Football Hall
A LONGSTANDING OVERSIGHT was finally corrected this week when Brent Musburger was named the 2025 recipient of the Pete Rozelle Radio-TV Award by the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Musburger — now a calendar-rattling age 85 — was informed of the honor by close chum Dick Vermeil. Dan Patrick and Jim Nantz led the buzzer-beating bandwagon.
The Montana-bred will be feted at the NFL's Hall of Fame weekend in Canton beginning July 31.
THERE'S NO QUESTION THAT some lingering antipathy by members of the league's Old Guard — media and otherwise — kept Musburger away from the career laurel.
He could be brash. He could be snappish. But from the time he hit CBS national TV waves in 1975 as studio anchor of “The NFL Today” alongside Irv Cross, Phyllis George and Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder,” the man was a star.
His Chicago ties were extensive. And he even had some back links to the Daily Herald.
HE GRADUATED FROM Northwestern's Medill School in 1961. In short order, he was a Bears beat writer for the Chicago American — an afternoon daily — and quickly rose to columnist.
At the 1968 Mexico City Summer Olympics, he went on assignment for the American and picked up some extra pesos as an audio stringer for the CBS-owned WBBM-AM (780).
By 1970 he was anchoring nightly sportscasts on WBBM-Ch. 2. Less than three years later, the Big Fisheye in New York came callin'.
The rest is upward arc. Musburger departed ESPN in 2017 to partner with nephew Brian Musburger and editor/wunderkind Bill Adee to start the pioneering Vegas Stats and Info (vsin.com). He remains affiliated today.
REGARDING MUSBURGER'S DAILY HERALD TIES:
• In November 1982 (!) he was the centerpiece of the paper's first sports media column. He had just participated in an international tempest when he called the tragic lightweight championship bout for CBS in which Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini killed Kim Duk-koo.
• Long before that, Bob Frisk — the Daily Herald's fabled sports editor — kept a copy of a Musburger/American column from NFL Draft Eve in December 1963 in a bottom desk drawer.
In that column, Musburger stated without equivocation that QB George Bork of Northern Illinois University (and Arlington High ’60) “ will be a No. 1 choice” in the next day's draft.
Bork, a phenomenal passer and athlete, had set myriad throwing records for Howard Fletcher's wide-open 10-0 Huskies.
MUSBURGER TERMED HIM an NFL “can't miss.”
NFL GMs didn't get the memo. Bork went undrafted through 20 rounds.
(To his credit, Bork slogged through three season in the Canadian Football League and then played with the semi-pro Chicago Owls. He crafted a distinguished career as a high school educator and coach and was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999.)
FRISK'S MESSAGE TO SOME of his aspiring columnists: Never spread your speculative wings too far. Look what happened to such a natural, driven talent as young Musburger.
That was then.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame is now for Brent Musburger.
STREET-BEATIN':
Anyone looking for supplemental reading after Sunday's final round of the Masters should drive — not putt — to access a copy of the current Golf Digest. Chris Jones chips in with a brilliant piece about Lee Elder, the first Black golfer to start in the Augusta classic. It's titled “Thank you for coming, Mr. Elder.” The Jones feature is a Netflix docudrama waiting to happen. …
Bob Costas has been tabbed by the Milwaukee Brewers to host the ballclub's official tribute to the late Bob Uecker on Aug. 24. The event was moved back to the late home date vs. the Giants in part to assure a platinum-AAA guest list. (Charlie Sheen is an also eligible.) Uecker, who died at age 90 in January, was part of the Brewtown broadcast scheme for an unfathomable 54 years. …
That Florida-Houston NCAA championship match clocked in with an average of 18.1M viewers, 21.1M for the game's dramatic closing minutes. That audience number is fine for CBS in prime-time. It was even finer for anyone who had the late-thawing Walter Clayton Jr. and the Gators minus-1 or 1½. (They won 65-63 and led the game for a total of 1:04, 45.6 seconds of it at the end.) …
Wendy Lewis — interim CEO of the Chicago Sinfonietta — is a driving force behind the orchestra's ambitious, multi-media “Soundscape,” set for May 3, at the Epiphany Center for the Arts, just southeast of the United Center. Lewis had a trailblazing 30-year run as Major League Baseball's senior VP/diversity and strategic alliances. She is also an award-winning sports documentarian. …
Also on May 3, the 2025 Kentucky Derby may not draw a full field of 20, which would have a negative pull on betting handle. Likely favorite is Journalism, a Michael McCarthy runner who somehow found traffic trouble in the five-horse Santa Anita Derby last weekend but still prevailed. (It still says here Bob Baffert will somehow find a '25 Derby winner and become the race's all-time No. 1 trainer.) …
He might not make anyone forget Mike Peluso, but the most overlooked Blackhawk of the season has been Ryan Donato. The vagabond left winger has had a career year. He's the sort of smart chorus liner that every NHL contender needs. (Father Ted Donato is head coach at Harvard.) …
Hey-hey, no doubt about it: The Cubs' new powder-blue “Friday” jerseys are so reminiscent of the moon landing-age Montreal Expos that it would be no surprise if Coco Laboy and John Boccabella body surf out of the Wrigley dugout. As Jerry Seinfeld once said of MLB's free-agent dominance, “We all just root for laundry now,” so what's the difference? …
And Sir Walter Ruston, after Michael Reinsdorf expressed frustration at the ongoing impasse between lost-in-space CHSN and Comcast over cable carriage of White Sox, Bull and Blackhawks games: “Maybe Xfinity will up its offer from three free months of HBO.”
Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears each week on Sunday and Wednesday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com. All communications may be considered for publication.