Ahead of the 2024 National Football League season, CBS Sports made changes to its longtime studio program, The NFL Today, moving on from longtime analysts and former NFL quarterbacks Boomer Esiason and Phil Simms. The network added former NFL quarterback Matt Ryan to the panel, who served as a color commentator for NFL on CBS games, ahead of the show’s 50th year on the air. Ryan will join analysts Bill Cowher, Nate Burleson and J.J. Watt on the show next season, along with host James Brown. Next week, Brown will be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences at the 45th Sports Emmy Awards.
Before receiving the honor, Brown joined the Sports Business Radio Podcast where he was asked about the new cast of The NFL Today. Brown has been working as the host of the show since 2006 and has helped the show continue to retain a level of prosperity and respect in the sports media space. He is widely regarded as one of the most skilled studio hosts in the industry and demonstrates a selflessness on the air with an aptitude to set up his colleagues for success.
“It’s a family, and I would be disingenuous if I said that there wasn’t some disappointment because they’ve been family for decades; literally just about decades,” Brown said regarding Esiason and Simms. “Boomer and I have worked together for a long period of time. They’re hard-working guys.”
Brown remarked that Simms is the hardest-working person in media and someone who knows the game, classifying him as a “gym rat” in that he continues to hone his craft at a high level. Additionally, he stated that Esiason covers a wide range of sports and that his work in media is “his life” and something that he loves to do.
“There’s some sadness there because they were teammates, but we’re also big boys,” Brown said. “We all played sports – they have longer than me – and we understand that it’s part of the business.”
While Brown is doleful to see Esiason and Simms leave the show, he is already laying the groundwork to make sure that Ryan will be able to successfully assimilate into the program. During his podcast appearance, he revealed that he reached out to Ryan and affirmed that he would be embraced and welcomed onto the show. This aligns with what Brown did for Watt last year, who he explained has a self-assurance because he is someone who was a star player and someone who has a genuine adoration for the sport.
“We bring in a couple of guys who are pined for success, and we just want to make sure that the transition is as seamless and as quick as possible by having meetings [and] getting to know each other,” Brown said. “Nothing beats getting to know each other, breaking bread and learning about your colleague so that you’ll know how best to play off of and to set them up.”
Earlier in the podcast, Brown elucidated that his colleagues know an immense amount about football, contextualizing it by averring that they will forget more football than he will ever know. Throughout the week, he will proffer ideas and storylines by them to gain their opinion on the matter and position them to thrive come Sunday. Brown has observed people in his position try to portray themselves as shrewder than they actually are, specifically pertaining to football nuances and information, but he understands that the job is about his colleagues rather than himself.
“In the world of 24/7 sports, there’s nothing new by the time we get to Sunday,” Brown said. “What’s going to be more important is the opinion, the insight, the information that our analysts, our co-hosts deliver, so therefore I want to make certain that I am well prepared to ask the most relevant and pertinent questions of them, and coming off of conversations with them during the course of the week, I know where they’re going, so my job is to ask.”
Elgie Love
It is ashamed that CBS has joined the likes of ESPN and pushing aside two veteran announcers and players who know the game in a much deeper way than Ryan. With hope, these veterans will be picked up by Fox Sports or some independent like Amazon or Netflix that has announced they’re going into the football business.