In his play “Julius Caesar,” William Shakespeare, wrote, “The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.” In the sport world the opposite is often too true.

I’ve never been a fan of the sports Halls of Fames for several reasons: For one thing, greatness is often subjective; often voters cast a ballot even though they never saw the person they voted for in action and vote on reputation, which is also subjective. But most important, in my opinion, is that an inductee’s character doesn’t count. If you get enough votes, no matter how seamy a person’s actions are, you’re in and positioned as a person to be admired – even if you have a blemished “civilian” career.

In my opinion, of all the Hall of Famers in all the sports Halls of Fames, Brent Musburger stands out as an individual whose actions deserves major criticism, instead of praise, because he ruined the life of two young men because he disagreed with them, when on October 16th 1968, U.S. track stars Juan Carlos and Tommie Smith protested the treatment of African-Americans in the U.S. during the medal ceremonies by raising a black gloved fist into the air during the playing of the National Anthem. Smith, who won the 200 meters in world-record time, and Carlos, who finished third, were kicked off the U.S. team and sent home.

Instead of celebrating the victories of the two Americans athletes, or attacking the overt anti-Semitism of Avery Brundage, head of the American Olympic Association in 1936, who white washed Hitler’s policies and in 1968 was president of the International Olympic Committee, Musburger wrote a scathing column calling Carlos and Smith” black skinned stormtroopers.” For those of you ignorant of the Nazi era, stormtroopers were the original para military organization, often called brown shirts of Hitler’s Nazi party.)

Because of Musburger’s column, the two athletes, instead of being treated as sports heroes in the U.S, were ostracized and had a difficult life instead of being celebrated as another African-American track star, Jesse Owens was after his victories during the 1936 Olympics and has so many other African-American Olympians since. (The 1936 Olympics in Berlin were the games that Jewish-American track star turned broadcaster Marty Glickman said he was not permitted to run in because the U.S. officials did not want to offend Hitler if a Jew won. I wonder what Musburger would have said if Glickman won a race and from the medal stand would have protested Hitler’s policies against Jews.)

But calling Carlos and Smith “black skinned stormtroopers,” will not prevent Musburger from being honored with the 2025 Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame during the 2025 Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinement Week on Friday, Aug. 1. That Musburger was named the 2025 recipient of the award symbolizes what I think is wrong about the sports culture in the U.S.: If you’re talented enough to be a professional athlete or announcer, almost any past atrocious behavior is excused by the moguls of sports, including team owners, league presidents, sponsors and networks.

While sports fanatics might feel that anything goes, I don’t. I believe that the majority of Americans if given a vote would agree with me that character counts and would rather have as role models for their children heroes with unblemished pasts.

A June 4, 2012 column in The Nation, quotes Carlos as saying [of Musburger], “We are talking about someone who compared us to Nazis. Think about that. Here we are standing up to apartheid and to a man in Avery Brundage who delivered the Olympics to Hitler’s Germany. And here’s Musburger calling us Nazis. That got around. It followed us. It hurt us. It hurt my wife, my kids. I’ve never been able to confront him about why he did this. Every time I’ve been at a function or an event with Brent Musburger and I walk towards him, he heads the other way.”

It took a while but not everyone feels the way Musburger did about Smith and Carlos. Peter Ueberroth hired Carlos as special consultant on minority affairs for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. And ESPN awarded Smith and Carlos their Arthur Ashe Courage Award in 2008, saying, “They were right.”

But the damage done to Smith and Carlos by Musburger was done.

It’s not surprising to me that Musburger was honored by the sport’s community because the history of the sports family tree is filled with examples of bigotry, lawlessness, cheating, blackmailing and sportswashing. If a player is a star, leagues and teams often forget the unsportsmanlike conduct of an athlete and welcome them back, instead of using them as examples of what an athlete should not do

The latest example is Pete Rose, who served five months in prison for tax evasion and is on Major League Baseball’s “permanently ineligible list” because he bet on baseball.  Nevertheless, President Trump asked baseball commissioner Rob Manfred to make Rose eligible for induction into baseball’s Hall of Fame. 

Theoretically, sports journalists are supposed to be the eyes and ears of the industry and keep the fans informed.  Most print journalists do, but most sports broadcasters conveniently forget or downplay the seamy side of the business.

Below are only a few more examples of the seamy side of sports that largely go uncovered by sports game day announcers:

• The moguls of sports, despite their unlawful actions, are treated as heroes: George Steinbrenner, the former New York Yankees owner, was convicted for illegal campaign contributions he made to the Committee to Reelect the President, who at the time was Richard Nixon, and to a felony charge of obstruction of justice.

• In 2013, SAC Capital, the hedge fund founded by Steve Cohen, owner of the New York Mets, pleaded guilty to insider trading and other securities and wire fraud charges.As part of the settlement, SAC
  Capital agreed to pay $1.8 billion in fines and forfeitures, one of the largest financial penalties for insider trading at the time.

• Often overlooked is how team’s owners blackmail cities to help finance a new stadium by threatening to move a franchise to another location.

• For years, game day announcers labeled the owners of National Football League teams as “the finest of gentlemen” during broadcasts, despite these “fine gentlemen” remaining silent as their players suffered catastrophic brain injuries from concussions.

• For years, Major League Baseball team owners stayed silent as players used performance enhancing drugs because fans liked to see moon shot home runs.

• And, of course, the International Olympic Committee awarding its games to totalitarian regimes is okay with the “sports above everything” crowd and by NBCUniversal which televises the games in the U.S, and acts as a PR arm of the IOC.

But the most constant ignoring of the seamy side of sports occurs every day by game day TV sports announcers, who like the three Japanese monkeys often “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”

I’ve heard game day announcers sing the praises of athletes who have rap sheets, some of whom have been convicted of crimes, without mentioning their unlawful conduct.

Throughout my career clients have asked me to suggest athletes for public relations assignments. I always wanted to be certain that any athlete I suggested had a clean bill of health. I never took the word of an athlete’s agent. To the best of my ability, I researched the athlete’s background myself and often asked my sports writing friends about an athlete’s character. I suggest that all PR practitioners who are asked to recommend an athlete do likewise.