Charlie Neal opened a road to visibility for multiple Black journalists and HBCU sports

When I learned earlier this week that my friend and colleague Charlie Neal had died at age 80, the news was not a gut punch or slap in the face; it was more like being doused with a bucket of cold water. The news announced the sobering reality that a particular chapter of my journalistic life had ended.

I first met Charlie in 1985 when he was the host of BET’s weekly sports talk show, The Budweiser Sports Report. Before there was ESPN’s Sports Reporters, Pardon the Interruption, Around the Horn, or First Take, there was The Bud Sports Report. Charlie hosted the show with grace, elegance, and authority.

The show featured my band of brothers, Black sportswriters working at daily newspapers and radio stations: Mike Wilbon of The Washington Post; Ralph Wiley of Sports Illustrated; Roy Johnson of The New York Times; David DuPree of USA Today; Tony Paige of WFAN; Bryan Burwell of The Detroit News; and me, then with The New York Times.

The Bud Sports Report was our first foray into television. The show pulled us out of the anonymity of print journalism and helped us become a presence. BET helped us become seen, and Charlie taught us — directly and indirectly — how to do a relaxed, insightful sports television talk show. We taped the show every Friday in Washington, D.C., and the program aired on Saturdays.

Nicole Watson, the first female producer for BET Sports, created the Bud Sports Report. Charlie was her boss, and when she proposed a talk show that he would host with a panel of nationally known Black sportswriters, he gave her the green light.

“We already had football and basketball, but we needed something during the offseason,” Watson said when we spoke this week.

When Bob Johnson launched BET in 1980, Charlie was his first call. Johnson made Charlie executive producer for sports, and he covered athletics at historically Black colleges and universities with an unrivaled passion and depth of knowledge, something I appreciated as someone who had attended an HBCU (Morgan State) and who had played football.

Over the next two decades, Charlie became the face and the voice of Black college football.

“He was an amazing ambassador for the network — Charlie was the face of the network,” said Watson, who is a journalist in residence at North Carolina A&T. “He was so popular that people thought he owned BET. He was super well prepared. He was a student of the game.

“He knew about the players’ families, their home life. He knew what music they listened to, where they went to church. He was a great journalist.”

The mid-to-late 1980s also were a time when Black sports journalists were knocking on the door to get to the next level of their respective careers. That television exposure on BET gave us a much-needed boost, and it all began with Charlie Neal.

What I appreciated about Charlie as a host was the grace, dignity and insights he brought to our conversations on the Bud Sports Report. He allowed us — encouraged us — to express opinions about Black athletes and issues of race in sports that were not seen or heard on any other network or television show at the time.

Watson left BET for ESPN in the late 1980s, and ESPN began its own version of the Bud Sports Report in 1988, called The Sports Reporters.

Largely because of Charlie and BET, each of us would become panelists on that show and others. Wilbon would eventually become co-host of Pardon the Interruption with Tony Kornheiser, and I would be part of the Sports Reporters from 1989 until the show’s final episode in 2017.

Though Charlie and I did not consistently keep in touch, whenever we met, we would talk about the Bud Sports Report, how the realm of sports talk TV had evolved, and the need for Black journalists to have a forum for thoughtful conversation.

We’ve lost a few members of that band of brothers. Ralph and Bryan died far too soon, Ralph in 2004 at age 52 and Bryan in 2014 at age 59.

Charlie Neal lived a rich life, and his journey ended at age 80. He touched so many lives and left a significant footprint in the journalism industry. And on a personal level, his death marks the end of a chapter I’ll never forget.

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