The mad 2022 NFL broadcasting carousel is extending beyond the booth to the sidelines as well. Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reports that Fox’s top NFL sideline reporter Erin Andrews is nearing the end of her contract and could move elsewhere.
However, Fox would like to keep Andrews on its No. 1 NFL broadcast team, where she’s been for the past 10 years. (That might surprise longtime viewers and fans who remember Andrews from her days on ESPN’s college football coverage.)
Fox has already lost analyst Troy Aikman to ESPN and faces play-by-play announcer Joe Buck possibly joining him on Monday Night Football if the network decides to let him out of the final year of his contract. Fellow sideline reporter Tom Rinaldi could very well be the last broadcaster standing on that top NFL broadcast crew, which will cover two of the next three Super Bowls.
As Marchand points out in his report, Andrews has established a reputation as a top interviewer for Fox in addition to her sideline reporting. In recent years, she’s nabbed off-field, sit-down conversations with some of the NFL’s top newsmakers including Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady. With that, she’s arguably a bigger part of her network’s NFL coverage than ESPN’s Lisa Salters and NBC’s Michele Tafoya.
(If we’re talking about sideline reporters, Tafoya probably began the NFL broadcasting shuffle when Marchand reported that she was leaving NBC and Sunday Night Football last December. Following NBC’s broadcast of Super Bowl LVI, Tafoya announced that she was joining Kendall Qualls’s Minnesota gubernatorial campaign.)
As mentioned, Fox wants to re-sign Andrews and that appears to be the most likely move. (Wouldn’t the same have been said for Aikman and Buck a couple of weeks ago?) But if Amazon wants another established name and familiar personality for Thursday Night Football, the streaming outlet could pursue her. (Could she have a role in a pregame show there as well?) Replacing Tafoya at NBC could also be an option, though Kathryn Tappen appears to be the choice there.
Marchand also said ESPN is interested in bringing her back, but Salters is already on the sideline for Monday Night Football. Going back to College GameDay would seem like a step backward. But what about Andrews hosting Sunday NFL Countdown? Samantha Ponder’s contract is up, and ESPN might try to seize an opportunity to bring back a popular name as it tries to add some sizzle to its studio pregame show.
Ian Casselberry is a sports media columnist for BSM. He has previously written and edited for Awful Announcing, The Comeback, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation. You can find him on Twitter @iancass or reach him by email at iancass@gmail.com.
