What will Fox do now? Tom Brady is the heir apparent to the network’s top booth alongside Kevin Burkhardt. This week we learned that his television career won’t start until 2024, but there is a decision to make now. Where will Greg Olsen end up?
Olsen upped his game to the extreme this season. He’ll have one more chance to make a name for himself, on the Super Bowl broadcast. It’s a good problem for network executives, too many good options. But what is the best option?
Keeping Olsen on the top crew would mean a three-man booth. The third guy, is a high-priced rookie, coming into an established team, which can cause problems. How will Brady mesh? Will he try to dominate or will he be passive early in his second career? Either way, the breaking in of Tom Brady, if you will, won’t be successful overnight. It may take some time.
I see Fox keeping Olsen around Burkhardt as a ‘security blanket’ to cover their rear ends if Brady struggles out of the gates. The line of thinking though, should be meritorious. The two (Burkhardt and Olsen) have developed great chemistry. They have fun and, as mentioned, Olsen has been receiving rave reviews from many credible sources. It’s hard to justify such a move based on performance only. But as we all know, money talks, and apparently very loudly.
Bottom line – will either analyst thrive in a crowded booth? It’s hard to say, but there is an inherent challenge for all involved when you put three people in a broadcast booth. They’re all fighting for air time. Even with a two-person crew there isn’t a lot to divvy up.
The three-man booth was popularized by ABC’s Monday Night Football starting in the 70’s and lasting until 2011. That second crew was mightily popular, with Frank Gifford taking on the role of play-by-play, working with Don Meredith and Howard Cosell. It was a unique trio, each excelling at what they were there to do. That trio had chemistry and worked well together.
As the franchise of MNF continued, Gifford switched to analysis in the mid 1980’s, working with Al Michaels and Dan Dierdorf. That triumvirate lasted a decade, but it was missing something. It got worse, as MNF had a bit of a downturn in the 90’s. ABC brought in comedian Dennis Miller and the result was disastrous. It didn’t work. 2 years was enough for that experiment. After they slimmed the booth down to just two, when Michaels was paired with John Madden. They were around for 3 seasons before the franchise moved to cable and back to a trio in the booth.
It took an incredibly special group to make a crowded booth work. It is not easy. But even when it does work, there seems to be a sigh of relief uttered when a booth slims down again.
Case in point, Troy Aikman. His first three seasons at Fox the booth was Joe Buck, Cris Collinsworth and Aikman. When Collinsworth moved over the NBC, Aikman seemed more than fine with it. While he missed talking football with Collinsworth, the adjustment wasn’t a hard one for him.
“It’s been a lot easier, to be quite honest with you,” Aikman told The Oklahoman back in 2005. “You’re not wondering, OK, who’s gonna talk now? Or who’s gonna respond first to this play?
In a three-man booth and it’s not just our three-man booth, it’s any three-man booth the game really goes all over the place. One guy wants to talk about this play in this way and then the other guy has his own ideas as to where he wants to go with it, so there’s not a lot of conversation per se between the people involved.”
Plus, there isn’t much time in between plays. Maybe 25-30 seconds? It is hard enough for one analyst to make a point and get out of the play-by-play announcer’s way, let alone two analysts.
The viewer gets cheated out of football knowledge if both color commentators can’t be themselves and provide information that is useful and informative.
Brady is walking into a top job as an unproven commodity. If you are to judge him by his press conferences, man we are going to be in for a long year come 2024. He never offered much in the way of information or personality. Perhaps that came from years of playing for Bill Belichick.
You can’t argue the credibility though. He’s alone atop many quarterbacking mountains in NFL history. He’s won 7 Super Bowls and the list goes on and on, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be able to carry himself as a top analyst on a major network. It doesn’t mean he can’t either. Only Brady knows what he’ll bring to the booth.
Greg Olsen has a very practical outlook on what could happen. It’s a testament to his professionalism and good character. He’s not looking to become a broadcast martyr if he gets bumped down the food chain.
“In regard to Tom, if he comes in and he takes it, I get it. I don’t ask anyone to feel bad for me. And I’m not going to feel bad for myself.” Olsen told The Athletic. “Will I be disappointed? Would I rather sit next to Kevin for the next 20 years? Of course. I’m not going to sit here and sound stupid and be like, ‘You know, just doing this for one year was plenty.’ Like, no, screw that. I’d like to do this for 20 years. I’d like to call 10 Super Bowls. Whether that happens or not, I don’t know. I don’t control it. But the second I spend all my energy worrying about what Tom does and worrying about my job security and who’s going to be in my seat, then I’m not going to be very effective. I just don’t know how else to describe it. I’ve come to grips with it, and I’m going to make it hard as hell on them to try to replace me.”
Just like a player, you show your skills for your own team and the other clubs in the league as well. Olsen did himself proud this season and who knows, if things don’t work out at Fox for him, there are other networks that would surely knock on his door. He’s worth it.
Andy Masur is a columnist for BSM and works for WGN Radio as an anchor and play-by-play announcer. He also teaches broadcasting at the Illinois Media School. During his career he has called games for the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres and Chicago White Sox. He can be found on Twitter @Andy_Masur1 or you can reach him by email at Andy@Andy-Masur.com.
