Heaven sent me a wonderful, very special, beautiful gift
Heaven sent me a very wonderful, supernatural, special friend.
Donnie McClurkin, “Special Gift”
Although I was disappointed to be leaving FOX, I was glad to be back with CBS—especially given that Mom’s health issues worsened during the time I made the decision to switch. It also meant I would be closer on weekends when and if I was needed. This was such a time.
It was December, 2005, when she had to be taken to the hospital, as she was struggling with various health complications that the doctors couldn’t monitor or control while she was at home. It was hard to see her that way in the hospital. She had always been so strong, such an encourager and example. But I was reminded, as I looked at her, of the times I had heard her encourage others so frequently with her knowledge of Scripture, especially the passage that tells us that death is not the end, but the beginning: to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (See 2 Cor. 5:8).
And yet still, I couldn’t think of letting go. A mama’s boy through and through.
She was in the hospital for six months and, in that process, showed me as much about how to live in how she handled her dying as I have seen even in many successful examples of people living today. Despite all of the pain and challenges of the ravages of diabetes, despite the three-inch needles searching for marrow, despite pulmonary hypertension and kidney dialysis, she never once complained. Never once.
My siblings and I spent the nights with her, we watched over her, we gave care beyond the nursing staff, and yet through it all, she never complained. In fact, she took to heart the teaching of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18, “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (KJV).
On the evening of December 28 I received a phone call from the hospital. Caroline, the night nurse on duty, told me that my mom was lucid and her vital signs were good but my mom had asked her to call and tell us that Jesus had visited her. Jesus did not want her struggling any longer and he was ready for her. They had prayed together and mom gave her instructions on final plans and preparations for her funeral.
When we arrived at the hospital in the very early hours of the morning it was clear to all of us that a wonderful visitation had indeed occurred. My mom’s room was filled with an aura and fragrance of holy presence. She was calm and serene and, although she had never before discussed her funeral wishes in detail, she was completely in-charge, organized and clear about how everything was to be taken care of.
Right up until the day that she died, her faith in Christ remained her clear focus. Her common mantra when people would mention me and my worldly success to her was, “The thing I’m most proud of James for is that he knows Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.” The room was filled with Scriptures—Alicia had printed them from her computer, eight and a half by eleven inch testimonies to Mom’s faith surrounded the otherwise spartan room. Mom was living out the truth of those verses to the very end. Truths such as that in Psalms 118:17, which states, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD” (KJV), an acknowledgement to her zest for life in all circumstances.
She was a ray of sunshine on her hospital floor, growing close to her nurses and all those on staff who came into contact with her. She drew their attention because of her gift of encouragement, and the uncommon strength and determination she displayed through her painful ordeal. Bill Cosby and I had become closer friends when I was doing a syndicated issues-oriented TV show that discussed topics of the day through the lens of African-Americans. Bill, of course, has thought deeply and spoken widely about this topic, and we developed a friendship through that. When he heard my mom was in the hospital, he wanted to visit.
The favor that God showed her through her afflictions drew many people to her, including Cosby. When he found out that Mom was in the hospital, he mentioned that he was going to be in DC performing at the Kennedy Center, and asked if he could go to visit her. It was a Sunday morning that he planned to visit with her. I offered to pick him up on my way to church, but I got a call from my mom saying he was already in her room, having caught a taxi cab to the hospital. While I had cautioned him that she was having breathing difficulties, when my sister and family got to her room, we heard her laughing heartily at the yarns only Bill Cosby could spin—that sight brought smiles to our faces. While Bill Cosby brought joy into her life that day, Mom shared wisdom and understanding with him.
But once those nurses and staff members got to Mom’s room, they probably didn’t find what they were expecting—someone who needed to be encouraged and cared for—as she was always the one trying to lift others up and help them in their lives. She would pray for them, give them counsel, and look for any other way that she could edify them. Just what Paul told Titus and the other believers to do.
Finally, in March of 2006, Mom was released from the hospital and she was able to be at the home she loved. But she developed an infection and it was only a matter of days until Mom was back in the hospital.
She was treated for the infection and after two week was released again. Not forty-five minutes after Mom arrived home, I received a call from Alicia. “You need to come—Mom’s in pulmonary arrest. They are working on her at her house.”
When I got to the house, the paramedics were feverishly working on Mom, trying to revive her. As I sat in the living room praying for her, a young man approached me and asked me if I wanted him to continue his efforts at reviving her as they took her to the hospital. As I looked up, I hadn’t recognized the young man as my neighbor, Michael Cardozo. He was a teenager working as an EMT, and he knew of my mom’s love through our family. I said yes, and he proceeded to work on her as they took her out of the house and put her on the gurney that was positioned next to her beloved bed of tulips, in their vibrant yellows and pinks.
She spent six weeks after that in a coma. Mom lived six weeks after this incident, which was five weeks, five days longer than any of the doctors or nurses thought she would.
We all took the opportunity in early June to whisper into her ear. “Mom, we’re going to be okay. If you’ve made the decision that you want to go home and be with the Lord, we understand, we love you. We’ll see you in heaven.”
Sure enough, the Lord took her to her true home, her eternal home, not too long after that on June 5, 2006. While I was understandably very sad at my mom’s passing and I miss her greatly, as a believer the prevailing feeling is one of great joy, as she is now in Heaven. Her memorial service was wonderful, in no small part because she had planned it all out. It was as it should be and as she wanted it to be—a celebration. She had put all of her affairs in order, and we had an opportunity to enjoy each other and reminisce about her and the lessons that she taught us, through all those years around the dining room table.
Shortly thereafter, I began my second stint with CBS, this time as host of the NFL on CBS. Weekends are both enthralling and exhausting during the season. Because CBS Sports is located in New York, I travel every Friday to the city, usually by train. It requires less travel time than flying does all told, and I can more easily work reviewing the clippings and press releases for the week that may provide pertinent talking points for our show. Each NFL club will release its own set of press notes for that weekend’s game, full of tidbits such as “the Colts are 6–1 when leading at halftime against teams located west of the Mississippi that are also north of Dallas” or something to that effect. They often are helpful by way of background preparation, though, so I do try to familiarize myself with all of those. Our football insider, Charley Casserly, the former general manager of the Washington Redskins and Houston Texans, usually travels with me. Shannon Sharpe has convinced me that the appropriate Saturday morning activity—to add to the preparation for our Sunday show—is to work out with him, or more accurately, try to work out with him. Shannon retired from the NFL in 2003 as the all-time leading tight end in receiving yards, a record that stood until 2008. Shannon has, in recent years, decided to trade in his NFL–tight end type body for a bodybuilding body; he has, in short, gone from merely really big to impressively chiseled. He is about six-feet, three-inches tall and two hundred forty pounds—all muscle. I, on the other hand am, well, not.
His workouts are grueling, making me use muscles which I previously doubted existed, at least in me. Worse yet, they take place at an incredibly rapid pace; he won’t allow more than thirty seconds to recover between exercises. This past year I invited our CBS colleague, Jennifer Sabatelle, to join the Saturday workouts. Like Shannon, she’s a workout fanatic, making my Saturday mornings doubly challenging.
I can live with that, but it’s the fact that we then clean up and head over to an afternoon meeting at CBS, when every muscle starts to tighten up, that makes me rethink my commitment to Shannon and trying to keep pace with him once a week.
We arrive Saturday in the afternoon at the studios for our production meeting, conducted by our producer, Eric Mann. Eric is a longtime industry veteran who has won twelve Emmys, directed three Super Bowl Today shows, produced shows for two winter Olympics, and has produced the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament studio show since 1991, and the NFL on CBS studio show since 1994.
Eric, a graduate of Northwestern, is as bright as he is tireless. And he is truly untiring.
We are seated in one of the only rooms I’ve seen at CBS that is of a size actually appropriate for its purpose. In the center of the room are two couches and three leather chairs. Those of us who are “on-air talent,” Shannon, Dan Marino, Boomer Esiason, Bill Cowher, Charley Casserly, and myself, are seated in this area, along with Pat Kirwan. A former member of the personnel departments of the Buccaneers and the Jets, Pat provides research and behind the scenes support for our background research through his network of connections throughout the football world. In addition, seated in a row on one side of the room, are about ten others—writers and researchers—without whom our studio show could not occur. It is truly a team effort—each of the people in that room will be vitally necessary for the success of Sunday’s broadcast.
We spend Saturday in an informal roundtable, discussing items that are certain to be in the broadcast the next day (“Can the Packers stay undefeated?” “Did the Packers make the right decision, letting Brett Favre go?”) or Eric, standing at the head of the room, will throw out ideas, to see if there is sufficient interest, around which he and the writers can create a show segment (“Will any teams go winless this year?”). We will then debate those ideas in general but not get too specific. Eric doesn’t want the actual live event on Sunday to lose its spontaneity—although it’s difficult to imagine that happening in any room that contains Shannon Sharpe.
After a couple of hours, it is back to the hotel to continue to study for tomorrow’s games and then to rest. It will be a long and exhausting Sunday.
Sunday begins with a wake-up call at five in the morning, and we are on the way to the studio by 7:30 a.m. Once we arrive we get dressed—my wife Dorothy is my wardrobe stylist having selected a season’s worth of Troy McSwain suits—and go to makeup. It took Bill Cowher a little while to come to grips with makeup—you don’t spend most of your life as a special teams player and defensive player, and as the head coach of a football team in a blue-collar city like Pittsburgh, and use makeup on a regular basis. Bill has transitioned nicely into the studio, however, although we all joke with him that it’s only a matter of time until he goes back into coaching. We’ll be sorry if and when he does.
Following makeup we get up to speed on any happenings of the morning—any late-breaking illnesses or injuries that we usually find out about through Pat and Charley and their network of coaches and front office members, and then we rehearse. I then call my wife to pray with me and for all of us for the day. I have learned not to go on the air without having prayed first.
Dan Marino and Boomer Esiason are the other two members of our weekly show. Both were very successful NFL quarterbacks, and there are occasional rumors that pop up that they don’t get along, which they find amusing. They get along great. Boomer has thrown himself full bore into the media world, also co-hosting a very popular morning radio show on WFAN in New York each weekday morning, for four hours, and has used his platform to raise awareness and funds for cystic fibrosis and various other endeavors that help others.
Dan is still a hugely popular Hall of Famer, and a sought-after endorser. He is no less gracious with his time, though, and has also used his platform to help charities and others in need. I remember a New York Knicks basketball game that we were leaving at Madison Square Garden on a Saturday shortly after I began at CBS. We were in a hurry, trying to get back to our respective hotels to get a good night’s rest, and darted out of a side door and across 31st Street into Boomer’s SUV and we were pulling out of the parking space, when we began to hear voices calling after us. “Dan!” “Mr. Marino! Wait!” “Wait!” We turned and saw two guys in wheelchairs, racing across the sidewalk. Dan rolled his window down and urged the two young men to be careful, and we watched from the other side of 7th Avenue in horror as our pursuers wheeled their chairs in front of oncoming traffic. They crossed without collision—somehow—and came up to Dan. Dan spoke first.
“Easy there, guys. I don’t want to see you getting hurt.”
One of them gestured toward his chair. “What—and hurt us further?” Dan, Boomer, Shannon, and I still laugh about that, to this day. Dan signed the jerseys and footballs that they had. I have never seen him unwilling to go out of his way to interact with people; I admire that.
Finally, at noon, the lights come up on the set and we begin speaking with our viewers, an audience which has been growing steadily over the last two years. We try to have fun as well as provide information and analysis as possible. Eric Mann views us as a hybrid between news and entertainment, so while we will always have fun and make the show lighthearted, we also begin our telecast with news of the day. Eric takes great pride in the fact that we will often give viewers substantive information on weather, injuries, and other late-breaking game developments at the outset of the show. At the same time, with Shannon in our midst, it will always be lighthearted for the viewers and the rest of us—whatever our role on the set.
That hour from noon until one consists mainly of us analyzing the upcoming games and sharing various bits of wisdom, like Shannon noting that the locker room at the old Veterans’ Stadium was so small that “he had to go outside to change his mind.”
Once the games kick off, Bill, Boomer, Dan, and Shannon take a break. I stay on the set, while Eric stays in the control room, still talking with me on my earpiece, along with the forty or so other people responsible for everything from tracking the progress of games to creating graphics for the screen to switching from one game to another to calculating the interplay between CBS Sports online and the television broadcast. I don’t know how Eric does it all.
Every few minutes, at understandably random times, Wayne (our lead game-day statistician and researcher) or one of our other statisticians will call out through the set. “Touchdown, Indianapolis, Game Three. Reggie Wayne six-yard pass from Manning. Second quarter. Seven to seven.” I will flip through my notepad to Game Three. All the games have been assigned numbers and the monitors on the set have those numbers posted as well. I will often ask if there were any key plays on the drive. The answer comes a moment later. “Yes, a fifty-six yard pass to Clark from Manning.” Eric will then find times for Gamebreak, sending my voice into the homes of people watching a given game. He will tell me that we’re showing the highlights of Game Three to the viewers of Game Six. I place my pencil on Game Six, so I call the announcers by their correct names, and then turn in my pad to my most recent notes on Game Three. They patch me into the broadcast, and I’m alone on the set, while my voice is live on the air.
“Hello to you, Gus and Steve and to all of you watching Arizona and Miami. Out in Nashville, Peyton Manning and the Colts knot the score at seven with the Titans on this six-yard touchdown pass to Reggie Wayne. The key play on that drive—a fifty-six yard completion to Dallas Clark. Now, back to the peripatetic Gus Johnson and his partner, Steve Tasker.”
They keep the audio on the set long enough for me to hear Steve ask Gus—and the viewers—if I was saying something bad about Gus. Far from it, and they knew it. Gus had worked another event for CBS in Miami the night before the game. He likes to tease me about going to Harvard, and expects some big words now and then—I knew that somebody in the broadcast truck would be telling them in a moment that peripatetic meant “well-traveled.” Sure enough, at the next game break, Gus leads in by saying, “Now let’s go back to New York and our own sesquipedalian JB for an update on Indianapolis and Tennessee. JB?” I thought his use of “long-winded” was a nice comeback. Probably a better rejoinder than my later reference to him as “indefatigable.” I know that keeps the day fun for us—and hopefully the viewers as well.
As we approach halftime, our statisticians distribute highlight sheets that correspond to the highlight video packages that they have assembled, and each of our guys is assigned a couple of games. For instance, Boomer might have Games Two and Four (Green Bay/Denver and Cleveland/Buffalo), and Bill has One and Five (Chicago/Miami and San Diego/Oakland), and so on. We will all spend a few minutes rehearsing, and then Eric sends those games that have gone to halftime to us for updates from around the league. This continues until the early games have finished, around four o’clock each Sunday.
The networks have a strange way of counting viewers. For the networks on any given Sunday, the one-hour pregame show generates ratings, which are measured and compared against each other. However, if the early games end early and there is any sort of studio lead-in segment before the network begins broadcasting the late afternoon game, the viewers for that late segment—even if it’s only a minute or two—count toward the overall studio show ratings. Because the viewers are always bigger for the late shows, that increases the ratings. Following the “bridge show,” between the early games and late games, if any, we repeat the cycle of cutting into games for updates, rehearsing, and performing our halftime highlights, and then more updates. I usually end up concluding the day’s games by myself with a quick recap of scores. It is rare that we finish all of the late games and can do a full recap show with all of our guys before it’s time to join 60 Minutes.
As a team we have great chemistry. Since 2006, I’m told by Eric Mann and others that the ratings race has become extremely competitive and we’ve enjoyed several wins over that span of time, which had never occurred before—significant, in that it comes against what is a formidable FOX NFL Sunday team. All that we can do is to do our best by continuing to prepare diligently, stay focused, have fun, and play the roles we were meant to play.
I have always been introspective, but it seems like I’m taking even more opportunities to reflect these days—when Dorothy can get me to sit still, anyway. Maybe it’s that I now have a granddaughter. I am so proud of my daughter Katrina who is married to a wonderful man and together they have blessed us with a precious granddaughter who I love doting over. Katrina has taken a break from school to be with Kaela, but assures me she’ll be returning to finish. Education is so important to reaching those future dreams, and I believe she and her husband see that.
It has also allowed me to step back and look at some of the other things that I’m doing. I’m still involved with children, as I’m on the ministerial staff at my church and have been a part of the adult committee working with the youth ministry for the past nine years. The God’s Covenant Youth Ministry meets once a month, and Dorothy ably and faithfully assists me with her regular attendance during my busy NFL season.
One of my other passions is the JB Awards. I was asked six years ago by Pat Allen, the former COO of the NFL Players Association, to lend my name and efforts to the annual NFLPA Gala, an event whose goal is to raise awareness of NFL players who are contributing to society and giving back—to reward their inherent desire and responsibility they understand in being role models. The stated criteria are to recognize players—each club nominates one—who demonstrate a “commitment to achieve excellence off the field through building better communities and stronger families.” Communities and families. It doesn’t get any closer to my heart than that. In addition to recognizing NFL players who have done this, we also raise money for the Special Olympics in DC, raising over a million dollars each year. I love helping out that wonderful organization, and to be able in the process to use my limited celebrity to raise up the example of guys who are bettering the world—it’s a very special and humbling role I try my best to live.
Not everything I do is in a formal capacity. Like most of us, many of the things we do take place in the everyday moments of life. I simply need to remember to be intentional about it. To be aware of those moments all around me when someone needs to be reminded how special they are, when someone needs a moment and a lift up in life. An NFL owner called me not too long ago with an issue he needed to discuss. We chatted for a while, and I said that I was about to board a flight but would call him when I returned home that evening. I then received a second call, again chatted for a bit, and once again said that if it was all right, I was boarding a plane and would call him that evening—I had one call to place first and then I would call him back. My attorney, Jeff Fried, was with me and asked who the second caller was.
“The eighth-grade son of the receptionist at one of Brown Technology’s business customers.” Jeff looked puzzled, so I continued. “I met a receptionist over at one of our customers—I was waiting for a meeting to start, and we began talking. Go figure—me, meeting a new person! She was telling me that she was working hard to try and keep her son focused. He is a bright young man but she’s worried about some of his friends, and wants him to continue to do well in school. I gave her my number and told her that I would love to speak with him. It’s been two months—I had started to wonder if he ever would call.”
In fact, that is a major reason that the technology company I co-founded with my business partners Reggie Brown and my brother Terence Brown, Brown Technology Group, even exists. We wanted to find a way to help—to hopefully create jobs for young people, and to teach those young people the Ingredients for Successful Living along the way. Jay Nussbaum from my days at Xerox was the catalyst in helping us to develop a strategic partnership with himself and a serial entrepreneur by the name of Bob LaRose. We are enjoying good growth as a company and young people will be a significant part of that continued growth.
I’m excited as well about being a minority owner of the Washington Nationals. The Lerner family was kind enough to gauge my interest in the club and then to ask me to buy into their ownership group. I do like baseball, although I can’t attend very often with my schedule, but my main reason for investing was the opportunity to play a role in reviving interest in the game by minorities and to ensure that the financial pie associated with the ballclub would be more inclusive. In addition, it feels good to see myself, a local kid with a very modest DC upbringing, now having an ownership interest in one of the highest profile businesses in the city. Like my decision to attend Harvard, I’m hoping that this will serve as a positive example for others.
I hope kids see that there are significant opportunities for them to be as meaningfully involved in pursuit of their dreams as they’d like. That the dreams they have in their hearts were placed there by God and are to be pursued. That their dreams are not limited to sports or music only, which are worthy areas to succeed in for sure, but that this generation can also own a business, and touch lives all around them. And to think that it was merely two generations ago that my grandfather owned a Negro League Team.
Following the 2007 season, I went on a trip with Dorothy. I needed to get away—I was still grieving over the passing of my mother, and then a beautiful young girl by the name of Hunter Ozmer died. Hunter and her father Hunt had come up to Dorothy and me a couple of years earlier in a restaurant near our home and introduced themselves. They told me that Hunter suffered from Niemann-Pick Disease and that, although she was only sixteen years old at the time, she had already outlived most projections. I was thrilled to lend my name and assistance to increase awareness of this awful disease, but Hunter was the driving force. She really championed the cause, raising awareness as she fought the good fight. When she took a turn for the worse, Dorothy and I were able to use my business partner Bob LaRose’s plane to fly to Roanoke to see her before she died, passing in early January, 2008.
So Dorothy insisted that we get away, and no sooner were we on our way before we ran into a bunch of kids in the airport who had matching T-shirts: “God Always Wins.” I loved the sentiment and realized, the more I thought about it, that it’s true in all areas of life. My mom died, leaving a void in my heart. I left FOX, not because I was looking to. I almost lost out in marrying the woman God had chosen for me, and I told a football television audience that a player was tackled on the sixty-yard line.
Time and time again, life hasn’t gone according to plan. Time and again things happen—no matter how challenging, how painful, or how unexpected.
And yet, through it all, one thing remains:
God Always Wins.