On Sunday, September 10, FOX NFL Sunday will begin its 30th year of NFL coverage. Howie Long has been a mainstay on the show and over the last three decades, he has developed a close relationship with another member of the show, Terry Bradshaw.
“We aren’t a rehearsal show. We do our show live. The reactions when he says things are so genuine because it’s like ‘oh my god, did he just say that!'” Long told the hosts of Pardon My Take. “He’s kind of like the white Charles Barkley. We’ve been together 30 years and we couldn’t be any more different, but he’s like the older brother I could have never imagined having. It’s a great relationship.”
When Long first auditioned for FOX, he said that nobody at the network told him exactly what they were looking for before his audition and he thought they were looking for the next Bob Costas, so he did a fair amount of research going in.
“I did every single research pinpoint on games. I literally spoke to the Commissioner, multiple coaches, I had a stack of papers this big.
“I did HBO’s Inside The NFL and I had my own segment where you literally ran the prompter with a scroll, you wrote it on a scroll and you had your hand hitting the button to start the prompter. That was my first experience with doing something from a national standpoint.”
