Greg Olsen of FOX Sports was a guest yesterday afternoon with Waddle & Silvy on ESPN Chicago. While the group discussed the ongoing NFL playoffs and Olsen’s games he has called for FOX, the conversation eventually turned to Olsen’s future and the prospect of Tom Brady taking over his chair.
Olsen, who was drafted by and played for the Bears at the beginning of his career, told Tom Waddle and Marc “Silvy” Silverman about Brady, “My respect for him and all that is never going to change. I understand the situation, I understand him looming over the job. From the moment I took it, I knew that would come with the territory and I was ok with that.
I was confident in myself that I could take advantage of this opportunity for as long as it lasted. We went in to it thinking it would be one year, ended up being two years. I got twice as much and we will see if there is a third. We will see what happens.”
As far as what will happen with Olsen when Brady begins his broadcasting career, he was asked about whether or not he would move to the second team on FOX or explore free agency.
“The thing about this job is that there are only so many seats,” Olsen said. “There’s not an endless supply of top jobs. There’s a reason they’re so highly sought after and there’s a reason certain guys occupy them. The reality is you really only have the opportunities of what’s out there.
I think I can do this at a high level and FOX has always been great giving me those opportunities and allowing me to climb. When Joe and Troy left it created an opening that maybe people didn’t anticipate just a year or two before. You just never know what’s out there, you never know how the musical chairs will die down. That’s all the stuff we are going to figure out this offseason.”
As for what Olsen is hoping for, he said, “My goal is to call the best games at the highest level as long as I can. That was my goal when I came in to it three years ago and that remains my goal after doing it for two years and calling a Super Bowl and some of the highest rated games in NFL history over the last two years. That’s my goal, and we will see how the rest will shake out, it’s kind of out of my control.”
As for whether or not Olsen would conisder a studio job over calling games, he added, “Calling games is not for everybody. It’s challenging, it’s fun, it’s a lot of work during the week, it’s a lot of prep and then when that game unfolds, you’re following a live sporting event for three hours with 40 million people telling you that you’re either good or bad by the minute. I enjoy that part of it, I enjoy the rush of live games in stadiums and live audiences. I would never say no to anything but I think my love and desire to pursue this right now is calling games. Obviously if one of those seats ever became available, you’d be crazy not to look into it.”
Olsen and his partner Kevin Burkhardt are scheduled to call this weekend’s NFC Championship game between the Detroit Lions and the San Francisco 49ers.
