Oakland (Special to ZennieReport.com) – Well, here we go again with NBC Sports Oakland A’s Broadcaster Brodie Brazil once again using one of my Zennie62 YouTube vlog titles as the basis for a vlog for his “Brodie Brazil” YouTube channel. Take a look at the date of his, which was done Thursday, and mine was formed and planned for December 4th. Even though I did not yet do the livestream, it and its thumnail come up in YouTube search for topics he regularly rifs on related to the Oakland Coliseum. The number of times Brodie Brazil has done this is too numerous to recount. I generally have ignored it and looked at it as the old saying “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. But this time, I decided to weight in on what Brodie Brazil was doing. I have nothing against Brodie and never met him, but this practice is rather uncomfortable. Others, like ABC’s Casey Pratt, don’t do it, so why does Brazil?
The trouble is, NBC’s Brodie Brazil can’t in this universe or the next come close to actually copying my style, and simply because it’s based on my economic development training both at Berkeley and with the City of Oakland, and then running my own consulting business, then working as Montclarion Columnist from 1993 to 1996, then Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris’ Economic Advisor from 1995 to 1999, and then from 1999 to 2001 as City of Oakland Consultant, and Executive Director of The Oakland Alameda County Sports Commission, then CEO of Sports Business Simultions (where I made my Oakland Baseball Simworld and XFL Simworld, using something called Forio Macro Language and system dynamics), then my pioneer Oakland blogs and the City’s first YouTube Partner Channel, and now Zennie62Media, Inc.
Brodie can’t copy that, and because he doesn’t reach out to me and is the latest in a long-line of Bay Area media types who don’t, but do copy what I say or even reach out to me for background, but don’t dare mention my name on their airwaves. And the fact is that if I were white, the story would be different. In other words, I’d be on their programs and mentioned regularly, and they know it. It shows you how special a man the late Montclarion Editor Chris Treadway was to allow me to have a column called “Oakland’s Economy” and then just “Zennie Abraham” from 1993 to 1996. And I did that after my experience on The Alameda Base Reuse Committee from 1992 to 1993, and my time as economic development intern with the City of Oakland. Chris treated me as what I was: an expert on economic development and how it’s done, rightly or wrongly, in Oakland.
The reason I wound up in media was because of the development of internet-based communications tools. I started Oakland’s first blogs (Oakland Focus and Zennie’s Zeitgeist) after then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown fired me because I accused him of being racist in an email to my Oakland-Alameda County Sports Commission. Then Oakland City Attorney and friend to this day John Russo told me I had a right to sue the City of Oakland because of what Jerry Brown did. On top of that then-SF Chronicle Columnist Chip Johnson wrote about Jerry firing me as if it was funny, and even though he’s black, failed to note that Brown’s actions were retaliatory, which is against California law.
But, Chip Johnson unknowingly laid out the evidence, and it would not surprise me if the SF Chronicle deleted it from its website. Fortunately, the Oakland Tribune had the story too, and got it right. I put out a press release saying that I quit the City of Oakland because Jerry fired me.
And the reason for my email to my board that started the whole thing, was I had discovered that Jerry and then-Oakland City Council President and Coliseum Joint Powers Authority Chair had meetings with the Oakland Business Community about the Super Bowl Sponsorship Plan I created from scratch. It focused on an effort to allow an NFL-approved company to buy the East Side of the Coliseum for the Super Bowl in Oakland for $30 million. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue loved the idea, and told that to Jerry as the then-Mayor of Oakland walked into my NFL Super Bowl Oakland meeting on May 10th 2000 at NFL Headquarters in New York City almost 20 minutes late.
And before that meeting, Jerry was upset that I projected to make $200 million in naming rights fees for the Coliseum, asking “What are you going to do with that money. You should give it to the school district”? I that the sports commission needed $22 million of it for the Super Bowl Bid work, in particular, building the 12,414 temporary seats that would allow us to meet a capacity level of north of 72,000. (Then, NFL Super Bowl Point Person Jim Steeg said my plan was the most expensive in NFL History at the time.)
So, Jerry and I made a deal that saved our meeting with the NFL because Jerry seemed determined to scuttle it (and the NFL would later inform me that the City of Oakland was working behind my back in the run up to our Super Bowl Bid Presentation of November 3rd 2000 in Atlanta). Current NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was Executive Vice President of the League at the time, was at our meeting with Commissioner Tagliabue, as was then-NFL General Counsel Derrick Hegans and NFL exec Jennifer Gonsalez. All were sitting to my right, I was at the head of the table, and the Oakland group, including City Manager Robert Bobb, and then-ANG Newspaper Publisher Scott McKibben, and Oakland Sports Commissioners Phil Tagami and Richard Matthews, were all to my left.
And who helped me set up the protection system at NFL HQ’s Board Room for our meeting? Roger Goodell. The point of all of this is that unlike Brodie, I was a major insider watching the development of, and impacted by, the main reasons why, today, Oakland has no major professional sports franchises. And, as head of the Super Bowl XXIX Bidding Committee, it was my job to know the Oakland Coliseum inside and out, even candlepower for the light standard. Since Brodie’s a broadcast journalist and talking about the Oakland Coliseum, it would be logical for him to reach out to me, right? But he does not because he’s infected by the same race-based-bug that the rest of Bay Area media was bitten by long before him.
NBC and Brazil, and some Oakland A’s Fans, have taken the view that I am to be ignored because I approve of the Oakland A’s leaving Oakland for Las Vegas. But they don’t bother to ask me why, or understand that I believe to this day if Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf had hired me to be the Howard Terminal Project Manager (and given me autonomy over the work and over City Administrator Betsy Lake), the Oakland A’s would have broken ground on their new Howard Terminal ballpark by now. They should because they have not walked my walk.
For example, Brodie Brazil is 42 years old. Which means he was born in 1981. I am 61 years old and was born in 1962. 1981 was my first full year as an undergraduate student at Texas Arlington. That means that in 2001, Brodie was 20 years old, and I had just completed my work in forming Oakland’s Super Bowl Bid. And, by that time, I had racked up 15 years of experience with Oakland and from an economic development, and most pointedly, sports business, perspective, including creating Oakland’s only sports commission. With all of that, and more, isn’t it totally crazy that Mr. Brazil and these A’s fans think it’s just OK to pay no attention to me, but take ideas from me? Of course it is.
No one is served well by that behavior, least of all those of you who deserve to know what’s going on and why, more so that what Mr. Brazil can guess. That’s not good journalism, and it takes a blogger and vlogger who says he’s not a journalist, me, to tell you that. But, as I said before, I’m sadly used to it.
Stay tuned.