Courtesy USA Today

(August 20, 2010) Pat O'Brien has tried to get back into TV sports. "There's been nothing but nice notes and support from the NBC people and (CBS Sports head) Sean McManus," he says. "There's never been, 'Let's not hire Pat O'Brien.' It's never been an elephant in the room."

And O'Brien, who says he's been clean and sober for 665 days Friday, is back on-air, in a new, nationally syndicated Fox Sports Radio show called Loose Cannons (weekdays, 3-7 p.m. ET). "This is a great re-entry for me," he says. "People, still to this day, ask me, 'Are you doing a game this weekend?' "

No, and it's been awhile. "My motto is the Winston Churchill line, 'If you're going through hell, keep going,' And I had my little bit of hell."

O'Brien, 62, grew up in South Dakota — he was inducted into its Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April for being a keyboard player with DaleGregory and The Shouters in the '60s — and was a production assistant on NBC's Huntley-BrinkleyReport and then a TV news anchor in Chicago and Los Angeles. After 16 years at CBS Sports, where he worked the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics, he left in 1997: "Not that they didn't want me there, but CBS didn't have many sports left at the time."

O'Brien went to NBC-owned Access Hollywood, which led to him working on NBC Olympic cable or broadcast coverage in 2000, 2002 and 2004 — "The Olympics came out of nowhere from (NBC Sports head) Dick Ebersol" — and also led to O'Brien having a role, on Access, in trashing pop culture.

Says O'Brien, who also hosted CBS' The Insider entertainment news show until he was fired in 2008: "Entertainment shows have ruined pop culture. For ratings, we went from covering movie stars and directors to people who are overweight, anorexic, have mental problems, then the reality-show people and anybody who's in trouble. ... We turn people into stars who have no business being stars, then they turn themselves into scandals."

O'Brien had one himself when his rants about sex and drugs left on a voice mail in 2005 — "from a night when I blacked out from drinking" — made their way to eternal life on the Internet.

O'Brien says addiction never affected his on-air work, "as far as I know. I'm a different person now." He says he "went to three rehabs and none of them worked. I didn't listen or participate. It was more my fault."

His last rehab stuck after he figured "either you stop drinking now or you're going to die."

Now, says O'Brien, "I have tough skin. I'm back."

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