News-Record.com

When Fox 8 sportscaster Rich Brenner retired earlier this year, it was the end of a 33-year career in broadcasting. Now Brenner, 61, says he wants to find a way to help the area he calls home come together and grow. When asked to join the board of Furniture City Motorsports, a group trying to bring a road race to downtown High Point, he was skeptical. But now he believes a race could be just the boost the city - and the region - needs. Brenner sat down with reporter Joe Killian to talk about racing, his history in sports broadcasting and the future of the region.

Q. A road race in High Point? A lot of people are skeptical when they hear the idea.

A. I was skeptical, too. Sure. But I was invited to a board meeting, and I listened. I listened to the passion of Mike Foster, the guy who started the thing, and the passion of all the people involved. And I saw all these people around me who knew racing in and out, who knew the people in racing. And I realized - these people are not dumb. They know what they're talking about. This could work. So we brought in this expert, (champion driver and racetrack consultant) Chris Kneifel, and asked him, "Are we just a bunch of kids dreaming, or is this something that can be done?" And Chris really validated all that passion.

Q. What drew you to the idea? Have you always been a race fan?

A. Oh, I am a race fan. But what drew me to it really was its purpose, not just the auto race. I believe in this area. You want to call it "Piedmontism" or whatever. But I believe that as the Department of Commerce has described us - as Greensboro, Winston, High Point, Burlington and all those points in between - if we can pull all that together, we could be very, very powerful. And an auto race could interest people in the area, draw them here.

Q. In terms of tourism, or actually getting people to locate here?

A. Both. Right now, when they interview people to take a job in this area for corporations like Wachovia, they have to interview five times as many qualified applicants to get them to take a job here as they do in places like Charlotte or Atlanta. They found out the reason why is that young people want to live in someplace that's cool. It's got night life, really cool malls, they've got the Braves if it's Atlanta. So a race could be the beginning of something. It could bring something to downtown High Point other than 10 days here and 10 days there for furniture market. And it could show the people of the entire region: "Hey! There's something I could go to." It could bring people from the whole region together, like they go out to the ballpark.

Q. So you think that the race could be the beginning of a rise in quality of life?

A. Well, to do this right it wouldn't be just the race. The golf tournaments now aren't just golf tournaments. It would be the 10-day experience - the festival. We bring in these cars that have been restored for a quarter of a million dollars, bring in auto shows, bring in military vehicles one day, bring in the crowd that loves cars. And you bring in bands, you have a festival in the streets of High Point. And then you start the races on the weekend - the main event and supporting racing series that come in, which also have television contracts. And television means we're advertising this whole area. The Wyndham is now advertising itself as the Piedmont Triad's golf tournament. They get it. If you get things like this going, we're an area that is ripe for an LPGA tournament again, for a seniors tournament. Once people notice this area and what we have going on for us, we're ripe for a lot of things.

Q. It sounds like you've thought a lot about the area's future and see this as a stepping stone.

A. It all ties together. I'm retired now. So everything I do from now on, I want to be part of making this area better. I want to go around and use the influence I've built up over 21 years to help this area. I've also been working with an Internet project called citytocitylink.com, which will bring together a lot of the chambers of commerce of all these cities. Those chambers have an interest in working together because people can be living in High Point and working in Greensboro; they can be living in Eden and Thomasville and working somewhere else. It's about the region, and we've really got to get to work to get the region going again.

Q. There are certainly a lot of people looking for jobs who would agree with you. How many of them do you think stand to directly benefit from the revitalization you're talking about?

A. A lot of people have been knocked down. We've moved from a manufacturing economy to a service and information economy, and there's this gap that a lot of untrained workers have to get over. But you're only knocked down if you don't get back up. People are getting it, and we're putting the onus on the schools, saying: "OK, boys and girls, it's no longer OK to quit school at 16 and go to work in tobacco or a textile mill or a furniture factory. Those days are over." We didn't want to accept that those days are gone. But we've been blessed with a beautiful area, beautiful land and climate, and I think truly some of the most generous people you can meet. We can do something with that.

Q. And you're talking about doing it with a sporting event, which is right up your alley. How'd you get into sports broadcasting?

A. It's what I always wanted to do. I went to Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio and I realized right away, I wasn't good enough to be a college quarterback. This was a little school, but they had two all-state quarterbacks on the roster. They were a small school, but they played extremely good small-college football - still do. My aunt was a society page editor for the Courier-Post, a Gannett paper in South Jersey. She encouraged me in writing, and I got involved with the college newspaper and radio station. From there, I basically just BSed my way into doing play-by-play, because growing up in Philadelphia, you were exposed to all of these great radio announcers and guys on TV. I basically imitated what the good ones did, and that's how you learn. Then you put a little bit of yourself in, and that's how you become an original.

Q. I read you were also a student reporter in Vietnam. What was that experience like?

A. It was one of the great learning experiences of my life. I went for a summer, and I went open-minded. That was an era where a lot of college kids were against the war. But I came back very convinced that we were doing the right thing. My mother was so much against me going to Vietnam, but she never got in my way. She didn't want me to go into the military after I got out of school, either, but I joined the Marines. I had a draft-exempt job when I was in school, so I told her it was the right thing to do. She was from England, a naturalized citizen, and she loved Winston Churchill. I've always loved Churchill, too, and I told her: "You know Churchill started as a correspondent in South Africa. Maybe I can start as a correspondent in South Vietnam."

Q. That's a rich environment for a young reporter. Did you have a lot to learn?

A. I met Ted Koppel when I was in Vietnam. He was just an unknown line reporter then. I was 20, and he was 28. He said to me, "Hey, kid, how old are you?" When I told him he said: "My God, somebody who knows less than I do!" I learned as I went, though.

Q. After that, how did you end up in sports writing?

A. Another guy I knew over there, a UPI guy, looked at me point-blank when I said I wanted to do sports writing, and he said, "You're stupid." But you know, if you take somebody from the sports side and you put them in news, they can do news. If you take somebody from the city desk and put them in sports, it's not the same thing. Sports guys hustle. We can really do anything.