Don’t expect to hear Gus Johnson on FOX’s coverage of the NFL this season. The broadcaster is back in school. He told Richard Deitsh of The Athletic that that schedule will make it hard to do more than one college game in the fall.
Johnson is enrolled in Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative. He told Deitsch that it is a program he is enthusiastic about and sees as an opportunity to grow his own skills and abilities to problem solve. The problem is that it comes with some serious time commitments and a lot of work.
“They bring fifty leaders in to talk for a year of intense discussion on some of the problems that face mankind. So we’ll study race, human rights, mental health,” he said.
Gus Johnson will still be the voice of Big Noon Saturday on FOX. He says that just like the players he is covering in those games, he is back on a college schedule. That comes with limits for anyone.
“I’m back in college now. And my classes are on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. So I’m probably going to need to call the college games on Saturday, and it’s a good thing they’re at noon, so I can call the college games on Saturday and then get a flight and get back. So I can prepare for classes on Monday, and I’ll have all Sunday to do that. At my age, the travel and prep work isn’t hard, but it’s a lot of work so I’m probably going to have to take a timeout on the NFL this year.”
Deitsch also asked Johnson about the work he has done for TNT during the NBA Playoffs. The enthusiastic play-by-play man gave credit to his boss Eric Shanks. He said not only does the FOX Sports boss encourage growth amongst his employees, he also helps facilitate it.
He wrote a letter of recommendation for Gus Johnson to get into the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative, and Johnson said that he approached loaning his top college sports voice to Turner the same way.
“Eric Shanks is a man that’s about growth. It’s because of him I got this opportunity at Turner. I asked him if I could have permission to do it, and he said yes, because he thought it would be good for Fox and he knew it would be good for me. That’s one reason that if I had it my way I would never leave Fox for the rest of my career. I want to be here because of the people, because of the support. I just want to grow as a human being.”
