During the company’s Upfront event last month, FOX Sports introduced its new lead NFL broadcasting booth featuring analyst Tom Brady, who signed a 10-year contract with the company to begin upon his retirement several years ago. Brady, a seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, will join play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt and reporters Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi.
Leading up to Brady’s broadcast debut, sports media reporter Andrew Marchand spoke about the topic numerous times on the Marchand and Ourand Sports Media Podcast back when he was working for the New York Post. In fact, Marchand introduced a ‘Brady meter’ to determine the likelihood of him taking the air for the network altogether.
About a year later, Brady is preparing to broadcast games and developing chemistry with his colleagues through conversations and test broadcasts. Numerous FOX Sports personalities have shared that he has been at the company’s headquarters to practice the craft ahead of his broadcast debut in Week 1 of the NFL season when the Dallas Cowboys face the Cleveland Browns. Marchand currently has the ‘Brady meter’ at a 99, indicating that Brady will more than likely end up taking the air for the NFL on FOX.
“It’s going to be an event that first game [in] the late window,” Marchand said while appearing on SI Media with Jimmy Traina. “It’s going to be Tom Brady – everyone is going to have an opinion about him, and that’s a lot.”
Marchand pointed out that many players do not necessarily know the sound of the broadcast when they first start in the booth because of their penchant to compete on the field. In fact, he stated that most of them do not want to commentate the Super Bowl but end up doing so especially for a lot of money. That being said, he understands that the pendulum swings both ways and that there are shortcomings he has compared to Brady.
“I’ve watched a million games,” Marchand said. “You and I would not be able to see the field like Tom Brady obviously – not even in his hemisphere – so he’s got to learn those mechanics, [such as] how you get in, how you get out, ‘What am I supposed to be saying? What should I be looking for? How many points?’”
Part of Brady’s responsibility will be explaining the nuances of the game in a simple way for the audience to understand. Traina, however, does not necessarily want him to dumb it down on the air. Marchand stated that it is part of the job, referencing his experience covering baseball in that the level at which these topics can be discussed is beyond normal and contains different vernacular.
“The job is to go from what’s in that brain to his mouth [and] make the complicated simple so you and I can understand it,” Marchand said. “To me, it’s not that hard to do in a lot of respects – I can give some examples – but that’s what he needs to do.”
