It might be contractually mandated that Tom Brady sit in the No. 1 chair on Fox Sports’ NFL coverage, but the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences believes the superior analyst is in the second booth.
On Tuesday, Fox Sports NFL analyst Greg Olsen won the Sports Emmy for Outstanding Personality/Event Analyst, an award in which his Fox colleague Tom Brady was also nominated. NBC’s Cris Collinsworth, college basketball analyst Bill Raftery, and ESPN’s Troy Aikman were also up for the award.
Olsen’s win continues an awkward trend of the Academy favoring Fox’s No. 2 analyst over its No. 1. Last year, Olsen was nominated for the award while Brady wasn’t nominated at all.
Of course, what the Academy thinks is hardly of any concern to Fox. The network is certainly thrilled to have both the winningest quarterback of all-time in one booth, and a highly skilled, well-liked analyst in Greg Olsen in another booth.
As Olsen continues to prove he’s one of the top analysts currently calling games, however, the risk that Fox could lose him to another broadcaster becomes heightened. The most obvious scenario would likely see Olsen head to Amazon’s Prime Video once the Al Michaels-Kirk Herbstreit booth runs its course. (Michaels, 81, is now on a year-to-year contract with the streamer.)
Outside of that, there are few clear opportunities to ascend to a top booth. Tony Romo’s contract with CBS runs through the end of the decade, and even if the network made a move it’d likely go with in-house succession plan J.J. Watt. At NBC, Mike Tirico and Collinsworth aren’t going anywhere. The same can be said at ESPN, where Joe Buck and Aikman could call games together for another two decades and no one would bat an eye.
Which leaves Olsen in a bit of a broadcaster purgatory. Everyone knows how good he is, but there isn’t a top job available for him to take. For now, the former Carolina Panther will simply have to bide his time and be ready to polish off that Emmy when he gets called for a promotion.
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