Long before Craig Carton and Ryen Russillo embarrassed themselves publicly, Marv Albert was involved in one of the most surprising scandals in sports media. As bad as the recent Carton and Russillo transgressions are, they don’t approach the lurid and shocking details of the Albert sex trial which happened 20 years ago this month. It was the first major scandal of a non-athlete sports media personality in the modern age. It’s impact still echoes today and sports media has never been quite the same.
The story seemed preposterous: a sportscaster with a famous voice and a famous toupee, biting, cross-dressing, three-way sex. It sounds like an episode of Brockmire, without the comedy. If someone had pitched this story to the National Enquirer, they wouldn’t have believed it. Even two decades later, the scandal is hard to comprehend. It’s even harder to believe that Albert, still working at 76 years old, orchestrated a Hail Mary of a comeback.
