I’m over Tom Brady criticism. I’m not saying it’s unfair or unwarranted. He isn’t a great analyst and FOX’s presentation of its marquee NFL game each week has suffered because he replaced Greg Olsen on the broadcast.
But let’s be blunt about the lesson here: America just doesn’t care who is in the booth. Trashing Brady’s performance or comparing him to his predecessor or his colleagues at other networks is just wasting your own time.
Ratings for the NFL slipped in the 2024 season. It’s pretty easy to explain. It was an election year. Chiefs fatigue is real. The Dallas Cowboys and New York Jets offered viewers nothing interesting yet still dominated media narratives at ESPN and FOX.
None of it had to do with Brady. More importantly, in the end, none of it even matters, because every other broadcast on television would kill for the ratings of any NFL game.
The league knows this is true and so do the networks. We have written about this before, but with the Super Bowl now less than a week away, it bears repeating. The NFL wants broadcast partners that value the league and treat it like the fourth branch of the federal government.
Doing business with the NFL is like The Wire. You don’t win Clay Davis’s loyalty with a check. That’s obligatory. You win his loyalty with public displays of fealty.
It’s why networks fight for headlines about who will be part of the broadcasts and throw obscene paychecks at their top broadcasters. Sure, these people are good at their job, but the eight-figure salaries are a way to show the league just how important their games are.
Plenty of critics have pointed out the obvious: Tom Brady, the Raiders minority owner, gets in the way of Tom Brady, the broadcaster. There is nothing inaccurate about that statement.
But until the owners of other teams definitively say Brady is not allowed to do both, the league is giving its approval of the unorthodox and complicated situation.
Look, there is only one Michael Jordan. He may be one ring shy of Tom Brady, but Brady was never the cultural force that Jordan still is.
Jordan’s commercial and business success allowed him to buy the Charlotte Hornets. Tom Brady isn’t worth as much as Jordan and NFL franchises are much more expensive than NBA franchises, so the closest the NFL could come is having its GOAT buy a share of the Raiders.
It still sends the same message to young and future players – it is possible to be so good at this game that it one day gets you into the club where the real power lies. It also sends the message to fans that football comes first, not business interests.
Tom Brady is a competitor. I take him at his word that he wants to be great on TV and he knows that it requires time and reps. Because he is a competitor though, he will never say that he is incapable of doing both jobs well. That means all of the time he is willing to invest in broadcasting can only help so much.
The other NFL owners are rightfully worried about Brady’s influence meddling with their own rosters. That’s why he’ll never really be able to prepare for a game like his colleagues. It doesn’t matter to FOX or to the NFL.
All either of them wants from Brady is star power, and he has that in droves.
Maybe that is all that matters to the casual viewer too. Our job is to analyze this business like it’s the Luka Doncic/Anthony Davis trade. We get so wrapped up in the industry implications of who calls what game on which network that maybe we lose sight of the fact that we are a very tiny population.
Broadcasting is not a science. It’s an art and art is subjective. Look, I still think The Eagles are a genuinely terrible band. Maybe the worst I’ve ever heard. The band members, their management and venue owners aren’t losing any sleep over me though. The Eagles have sold a ton of albums and plenty of people stream their dumb songs and pay a lot of money to see them when they go out on tour.
I think we may be looking at a similar situation with Brady, who for the record, I don’t think is as bad at broadcasting as I think The Eagles are at music.
“Desperado” is a garbage song. Fight me!
Tom Brady isn’t great at this. Maybe you and I can rattle off names of a dozen people that would make FOX’s Super Bowl broadcast better. At the end of the day though, it’s the Super Bowl. People aren’t going to base their decision to watch or not on who is in the booth.
Tom Brady is a star and if anything can add to a Super Bowl that already includes the Chiefs going for a three-peat and a halftime show that could result in legal action, it’s the star power of the biggest name in the sport’s history.
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Demetri Ravanos is a former columnist and editor for Barrett Media. He is the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host of the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
