Fox Sports’ Greg Olsen Not So Subtly Warned Future Fox Analyst Tom Brady That TV Broadcasting Sucks During Meeting
Fox Sports lead analyst Greg Olsen skillfully told current Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback and future Fox Sports lead analyst Tom Brady that broadcasting sucks.
Brady signed a lucrative contract with Fox Sports that will pay him $375 million over ten years to be their lead analyst once he finally retires from football. Fox lost their number-one team of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, so they pivoted and offered Brady a contract to go straight from the field to the broadcasting booth.
Fox’s current number-one team consists of play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt and former NFL tight end Olsen. Once Brady retires, he will join Burkhardt as Fox’s new number-one team.
Buck told Jimmy Traina on the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast that he thought there was a chance that Brady would not honor his contract with Fox and back out of the deal.
Burkhardt was a guest on Traina’s Sports Illustrated Media Podcast podcast Tuesday, and Traina asked him about his future partner, Brady.
“Do you think about the Brady thing and the potential of working with him?” Traina asked Burkhardt. “Is there any communication with Tom? What is that whole deal at this point?”
Burkhardt acknowledged that he had spoken to Brady about the future pairing, but Burkhardt was set on the moment with his current TV partner, Olsen.
“Texted with Tom, the basic text back-and-forth, and that was it,” Burkhardt answered. “I also have so much love and respect for Greg. And you know Greg and I talked about it openly for a while.”
Broadcasters meet with notable players of teams they cover for that weekend. Burkhardt described the meeting to Traina that he and Olsen had with Brady before they broadcasted a Buccanneers game.
“We obviously have a lot of Tom games, is when we had them the first time, both guys were awesome,” Burkhardt added. “We’re in the production meeting, and Greg just diffused the whole situation, and Brady was great busting balls. It was fun.”
Burkhardt described that Olsen jokingly told Brady that broadcasting was not as hyped up as Brady thought it might be.
“I can tell you one thing, some of the other stuff I’ll leave with us,” Burkhardt continued. “When we came on, we’re just shooting the shit at first like you usually do before these meetings. Hopefully, he doesn’t mind me saying this, but Greg said, ‘Tom, I gotta tell ya this TV thing sucks,’ but it was great. We were dying, dying laughing. And it was fun; we had a good back-and-forth.
Traina believed Brady had a good sense of humor to understand Olsen was goofing on him about his future job.
“He absolutely did; he was great at busting chops back,” Burkhardt said.
Watch above via the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast.
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