Before 2020, current lead FOX NFL analyst Greg Olsen didn’t know what the grind of a broadcaster necessarily was. It was when he and Kevin Burkhardt were calling XFL games during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season that he learned about a different aspect of the industry.
Olsen was a guest on The Ryen Russillo Podcast this week and he mentioned how the XFL taught him about the week-to-week grind and some of the monotony that can come with that role compared to the one game a year he would do on his bye week in 2017 and 2019.
“It wasn’t until I did the XFL 2.0. Kevin and I were partners back in 2020. We called the first 5 games of that season. Until that point, I never was in week after week after week. You come home on a Sunday, you regroup on a Monday, and you dive back into next week’s prep and you get ready to go back on the road.
“It wasn’t until that 5-week XFL stint that I saw the monotony of the week after week. You come off the high of calling a great game. It’s just like as a player. Tomorrow that game is over, you’ve got to get ready to do the next one. That was really the first time this isn’t something you just prep for one time, you check the box, and move on.”
Olsen mentioned that while calling the games and doing the preparation is fun for him, he knows that you have to treat the analyst role as a full-time position because if someone isn’t prepared before being on air, people will notice.
“Calling the games, preparing for the games, that was a blast. I always loved that part of it. You have to really come to grips with if you are going to do it and you are going to do it right, this is a full-time gig. If you are not prepared and if you are not into the game, especially in today’s world, people can tell and they know and they are not shy of telling you how they feel.”
Of course, even if someone is fully prepared with as many notes as possible, a sporting event can take many twists and turns. Olsen talked with Russillo about how the broadcast crew goes through all possible contingencies to be prepared for anything that can happen.
“One of the coolest challenges, but also one of the more difficult ones of calling the live game is we prepare all week. You know the depth charts, game stories, injuries, game styles. Just as a player, you can do all the prep you want. When that ball kicks off, you are following a live game that you really don’t know which direction it’s going to go.
“That’s why we work out all these different contingencies, all these storylines. If the game takes one of those paths, you’ve put some forethought. You have no control over the game. For 3.5 hours, you are reacting to a live football game and you have to prepare for wherever it goes.”
Burkhardt and Olsen did a chance to call their first Super Bowl back in February and the former tight end knows it is going to take a while for people to get accustomed to the duo calling the big game because they might have just heard them for the first time this year.
“It sounded new and sounded different because it is. People have obviously heard Kevin for longer than me. Unless you watched a bunch of Dallas Cowboys 1:00 PM games last season, we were getting those doubleheader where we would have pretty good-sized audiences, but we did no playoff games, like 2 primetime games on NFL Network.
“Our crew, as the B crew, wasn’t calling 4:30 Green Bay-Dallas with 40 million people. It just wasn’t our gametime. I think people this year, a lot of them just heard us for the first time. It’s voices that you weren’t accustomed to hearing. You were accustomed at 4:30, turning it on and hearing Joe and Troy. It just becomes ingrained in your mind.
“I remember as a kid growing up and you hear Madden and Summerall. You just hear the voices you are accustomed to hearing and over time, you just say those are the games when I hear the voices, I absolutely relate it to this must be a big moment.”
