It’s 5 o’clock somewhere…
5 O’Clock Club
The 5 o’clock club is published from time to time during the season, and aims to provide a forum for reader-driven discussion at a time of day when there isn’t much NFL news being published. Feel free to introduce topics that interest you in the comments below.
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I like it when I turn on an NFL game and Mark Schlereth is the network analyst because he isn’t a former Dallas Cowboy; he is a former HOGS. He’s also a pretty good game analyst with about the right
mix of information and entertainment value.
That said, I don’t think I’ve ever checked the game listings, scanning for Schlereth’s name to figure out which game I want to watch on Sunday afternoon.
This story, published on Pro Football Talk recently, is just a footnote, even by NFL offseason standards:
The awkward situation at Fox got a little more awkward on Tuesday night, at the annual Sports Emmys awards.
Greg Olsen, the No. 2 NFL analyst at Fox, won the award for Outstanding Personality/Event Analyst. The other nominees included Tom Brady, Fox’s No. 1 NFL analyst.
It was awkward last year, too. After Brady’s first year after supplanting Olsen as the top analyst at Fox, Olsen was nominated for the award. Brady was not. (Brady’s long-time on-field nemesis, Peyton Manning, won the trophy.)
Olsen continues to be stuck behind Brady, while waiting for the top spot to possibly open at another network.
At a deeper level, the fact that Olsen won the award underscores the oddity of the decisions that often are made when it comes to NFL coverage. It doesn’t matter if Olsen is objectively better than Brady. Brady has the rings, the name, and the fame.
But the article prompted me to ponder a question that has nagged at my odd brain for many years, namely, why broadcast networks pay huge contracts — Tony Romo gets a reported $18 million annually, which is less than half of Tom Brady’s reported $37.5m — to get former players with huge name recognition into the broadcast booth. Now, we have Russell Wilson turning down the chance to continue playing football with the Jets to become an analyst with CBS. Name power clearly matters to network executives, but I wonder if it actually puts eyes on screens.
I mean, have you ever decided which game to watch based on who the announcers are for the game?
Surely, the drawing power of an NFL game is based on the matchup of the two teams on the field. Good teams in important games draw bigger audiences than bad teams in meaningless games; the logic doesn’t seem hard.
It feels, to me, as if the networks could save a lot of cash by just hiring a pair of competent professionals to work the booth. Basically, as long as the audience isn’t actively turning off the game because of the announcers, they’re good enough, and, as we see from the Olsen example above, the biggest football stars aren’t necessarily the most gifted broadcast analysts.
But I’m curious what you think.
POLL
Is it good value for networks to pay huge contracts to former players to work as analysts? Do you watch/not watch based on the announcers in the booth?
