Tom Brady recently announced that he won’t be calling games for FOX until the fall of 2024 – more than 18 months from now. The news, which he broke on FS1’s The Herd with Colin Cowherd, put to rest any speculation about when exactly Brady would pop up on television.
It seems to have helped with morale at FOX Sports. Imagine how many times they’ve all been asked about Brady. The cracks were already starting to show before Brady’s announcement.
Kevin Burkhardt revealed he hasn’t thought about Brady for “10 f—ing minutes.” A behind the scenes look at how FOX produces games in the Sports Business Journal included above and beyond glowing reviews about Greg Olsen’s impact on the production crew. And Terry Bradshaw has come out saying he believes Brady will struggle in his role with FOX.
Probably not the best welcoming of a new teammate, but can you blame them? Brady retired then unretired. They’re asked about him all the time. And anything he does can have a positive or detrimental affect on their jobs. Ironically, even though Brady won’t start at FOX until 2024, he’s going to continue to host his podcast for SiriusXM.
With that being said, I think it’s a mistake to not have Brady participate in FOX’s Super Bowl coverage both on camera and off camera. FOX’s studio guys deserved a chance to ask him questions about life, his future, his past and his analysis of both teams having faced them before. The only way to build morale is to get folks in the same room talking to each other, sharing experiences, and figuratively “breaking bread.”
If he were there on site, it would’ve been the perfect opportunity for him to sit there and see what goes into making a production work. Brady says he’s taking a gap year to learn the ropes of broadcasting. There’s no better opportunity to do that than sitting behind the scenes in the production truck watching experienced producers broadcast the biggest television show this country has to offer.
Sitting on the side while the studio guys are getting prepared for a segment or having production meetings for the biggest football game in the world puts him in a high intensity situation right away – something he’s known for diffusing on the field. It’s hard to learn until you watch and it’s even harder to learn until you try. And you can’t try until you know what something actually entails.
From a television standpoint, the likelihood of the Super Bowl pregame show losing in the ratings to anything is slim to none. But with the recent transactions that have happened in the NBA, competition on Sunday afternoon will definitely be on another level. Kyrie Irving and the Mavericks will be facing his former Nets teammate Kevin Durant and the Suns at 1:00 PM on ABC, a day that is solely supposed to be focused on the Super Bowl. The Puppy Bowl will also be simulcasted around the same time on Animal Planet and TBS, two highly distributed cable networks.
A Brady interview around that same timeframe probably draws a good chunk of viewers to the pregame show to see what he’s going to say rather than watch the NBA game or puppies. Okay, I’m not 100 percent sure about the puppies.
Brady’s former teammate Rob Gronkowski already works for FOX. He’s business partners with FOX analyst Michael Strahan. Even if he’s not doing analytical segments with the full crew throughout the day, it should be easy to get him to chop it up with Gronk and Strahan for a freestyle segment or two where he talks about last season and what he saw on the field that could help both teams win.
Even if he’s not talking about the game, Brady is a big enough story in that he could talk about himself and his career and great moments that happened. He could talk about funny moments he had with Gronk. It’s just weird that the future face of the NFL on FOX isn’t going to be on screen for FOX Sports’ biggest event of the year.
It makes you wonder if Brady is still headed to the broadcast booth or if other mechanisms are being negotiated. If FOX wants to find a way to keep Olsen in the booth without making it a three man booth and without moving him to the number two team, you have to wonder whether FOX is going to try and emulate ESPN and the ManningCast with Brady. Even if that happens, how would you hear Brady?
Does he take over the SAP option on your TV while the Spanish broadcast of games airs on FOX Deportes? Or are the games he’s calling simulcasted on FS1? Is he exclusively on the FOX Sports app and is that option free or something you have to pay for every week? And if he’s exclusively on the app, is FOX getting a return on investment by paying him $375 million? How does he differentiate himself from the ManningCast?
We will probably know answers to all of these questions before the fall of 2024 but it doesn’t help that Brady’s stint with FOX has already become a rollercoaster before it started. Hopefully the stint doesn’t become a regrettable stunt.
