Thom Brennaman will call ACC football games for The CW, the second chance he deserves

Thom Brennaman will call ACC football games for The CW this season, four years after using a homophobic slur in a hot-mic on-air moment that, until now, had seemed to end his career.

Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reports that Brennaman will be The CW’s “lead voice” for its ACC football broadcasts.

I couldn’t be happier about it.

As just about everyone in the sports world knows, on an August evening in 2020, Brennaman, calling a game for the Cincinnati Reds, made a crack about Kansas City being “one of the f*g capitals of the world.” Aside from Kansas City being anything but, the slur cost him his job with the Reds, as well as his Fox Sports gig calling NFL games.

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The reaction by many in the media, and on social media, was merciless. The memes still pop up today, four years later.

To be sure, Brennaman deserved criticism. He deserved a suspension and a very healthy dose of education. There was no defense for him using that word. There wasn’t then and there isn’t now. Brennaman himself agrees.

While everybody in the media makes a mistake at some point in their career, this was a particularly bad one.

Still, as I talked to people like Billy Bean at Major League Baseball, Erik Braverman at the Los Angeles Dodgers, as well as other gay people across the sports world, I heard a common refrain about reaching out to Brennaman, education, talking and working with him.

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I wrote a column at the time imploring the Reds to not fire Brennaman. With a healthy suspension, I saw an opportunity to educate a man who made a hot-mic mistake, and then channel his powerful voice to elevate the needs of the LGBTQ community.

The Reds didn’t listen.

You know who did? Brennaman. The day after I wrote that column, he tracked down my email and wrote a sincere “thank you” note. He didn’t ask for anything, just wanted to thank me for my “grace.”

I offered to talk with him and share. He took me up on it.

Over the last few years, he has gone about listening to, and helping, the LGBTQ community. Lunches with strangers. Visits to LGBTQ non-profits in the Cincinnati area. Talking with out people across sports. Attending LGBTQ fundraisers. He’s done it quietly, out of the spotlight, talking about it when asked.

Over those years, he and I have spoken dozens of times. A few things became clear to me.

First. No, he doesn’t hate gay people. He never has. In fact, he’d known gay people since he was a teenager in the late 1970s and early ’80s, even defending one of his high school friends who happened to be gay — former GLAAD executive Scott Seomin — from bullies.

“High school in the 80s in Cincinnati, gay stereotypes were used all over the place,” Seomin told me a couple years ago. “But I never heard it from Thom.”

Second, Brennaman actually didn’t understand the power of the word he used in the minds of gay people. Of course, he didn’t think it was a compliment. Yet as he listened to dozens of LGBTQ people in the Cincinnati community and across sports, he realized — like so many straight men — that a word he thought was just another dumb insult was so, so much more.

Third, and maybe most importantly, he really wanted to help. This wasn’t “hey, let me make a couple public donations and get my job back” performative charity. This was quiet, behind-the-scenes working with local non-profits and advocacy groups to actually make a difference.

Yet of all of the conversations I’ve had with Brennaman and the people around him, there was one comment he made to me that sticks out as particularly representative of the man I’ve gotten to know.

He’d lost his income. He had a family to provide for. He’d been attacked mercilessly by people across the media and social media. The memes were relentless.

Yet with all of that, he said something shocking to me one afternoon on the phone about a year ago.

“I’m OK with what’s happened,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. I hate how much I hurt some people. I’ve lost so many nights of sleep over that, I can’t even count that many sheep.

“But if it hadn’t happened, I would have never learned about what the LGBTQ community goes through. Some of my neighbors. I would have stayed pretty blind to it. And I never would have gotten the chance to help.”

Every word in there might not be placed perfectly — I wasn’t recording the conversation — but that’s what he said.

How could anyone think this man should never work again?

We’ve seen other men in sports make mistakes and get not just a second chance, but at times be embraced by the LGBTQ community. None are more prominent than NBA legend Tim Hardaway. UC-Irvine basketball coach Russell Turner has become a friend as well.

When I’ve made mistakes, I’ve always been grateful for the opportunity to remedy them, and to get a second chance. Good for the folks at The CW for seeing that after four years, and all of the work Brennaman has engaged to become a strong supporter of the LGBTQ community, it’s time to give him that second chance too.

Brennaman’s four years of work to redeem himself, and this second chance at a career, are the path the entire LGBTQ community should embrace. This is what we want to see, as our society continues to educate itself about our community.

When most people in TV wouldn’t even take Brennaman’s call — Brennaman had nearly resigned himself to his career being over — executives at The CW have seen the power of this man’s redemption. Good for them.

There will be people who are upset about this. There always are. They’ll resurrect the social media memes, cry foul, claim they’ll never watch The CW again. At least one person in the sports media even told me at the time that Brennaman should never work again.

Thankfully, they didn’t get their wish.

Most Americans want to forgive. They want to watch people who make mistakes — as have we all — get back on their feet, provide for their family, pursue the career they love and chase their dreams.

I’m so glad Thom Brennaman, who has become a friend of the LGBTQ community, gets to do all that again.

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