The Press Box - Instant Reaction Pod: Tom Brady Is Going to Fox

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

Bryan and David are back to discuss the news that Fox Sports hired Tom Brady as an NFL analyst after he retires. They discuss the Fox announcement, how this contract compares to others in the industry, and when Brady might make the transition. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Chris Vernon, and me and my buddy Kevin O'Connor, aka Kevin O Everything, host an NBA podcast called The Mismatch. They call it The Mismatch because I'm awesome and Kevin is a gigantic nerd. No, no, that's not why at all, Chris. They call it the Mismatch because I have a brain and you're a loudmouth bozo. Good grief. Anyway, listen to our amazing NBA podcast, The Mismatch. Or don't. We really don't care.

We're probably going to win a million awards either way. Chris, we do care. So don't say that. Please subscribe and listen to the mismatch only on Spotify. Did you really call me a bozo? Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Erica Servantes here. David, this morning, there was a big announcement. It was the final and probably the most mind-blowing

free agent move in the great NFL announcer shuffle of 2022. Fox hired Tom. Brady. And the deal says that when Brady retires from the NFL, and I guess we should say if Brady retires from the NFL, he is going to join Fox's number one announcing team and call NFL games with Kevin Burckhard. Mike McCarthy, a front office sports report that Brady will make $20 to $25 million a year, which means Brady is the current holder of the Romo trophy for highest paid announcer in sports. David is a podcaster. I'm a podcaster. I'm contractually obligated to say there's a lot to unpack here. Where do you want to start with

Tom Brady to Fox? Well, first of all, let's start with what you said. This is the last, what do you said, the last move on the chessboard for 2022. Well, this is not 2022, right? I mean, this is presumably 2023 at the earliest, right? I mean, I think that I'm sure that there is a term in on the interwebs for uh you know when a when a when an earnest tweet just beggar as belief to such an extent that when you see it you can't as you only assume that it's a gag right i mean that's i think this must be whatever the words for that this must be just the platonic ideal of that because it just was it's just such a weird tweet it's just such a weird announcement to announce something that's not only not going to happen necessarily next year,

but we don't know when it's going to happen. I think we can all sort of presume that if we're in negotiations that you're probably targeting next season. But who knows? These negotiations could have happened in Brady's, you know, several weeks of retirement. And they just said, well, as long as we're there, as long as we have a number, why don't we just ink this for the future, you know, for whatever point in the future? So it's just weird that they would be announcing it.

It's, we talked when, when, you know, Monday Night Football and Amazon started making moves at NFL booths that to some extent ABC and Fox, or sorry, CBS and Fox just sort of can sort of make their own stars. You know, they have the rights packages. And to some extent, whoever they say, if they were just to say, this is, you're looking at, at the next Tony Romo, you're looking at the next Chris Collins, or if you're looking at the next Jim Nant, whatever, then you sort of just buy it. But this is, this seems to go in the other direction, right? That like, in a time of, you know, contract bidding wars and broadcasting uncertainty, Fox has determined that the most important thing is to project confidence, you know, go ahead to assure everyone that no matter what your feelings are with Greg Olson,

with Greg Olson as your top color guy, there is a more, you know, dynamic future that awaits you. Is that, is that the right way to be reading this? I would say yes. And I would say that Fox hadn't won a press release in a while. Right. They've been losing press releases. To the extent that's important. Troy Aikman is leaving the network and going to ESPN. Joe Buck, the face of Fox Sports, if there ever was one, is leaving and going to ESPN. Ah ha, we got to do something, right? Joe Davis on baseball, that's good. Kevin Burckhardt on football, that's good, but we got to do something. I know Tom Brady is going to join Fox at some undetermined point in the future. Yeah. And it really is the Fox Formula, which is let's go find a guy that maybe isn't right on everybody's radar and develop

them into a great announcer. And then let us also at the same time absolutely break the bank to go get the biggest name we can find. Sure. And you see that in their new number one boot, Kevin Burkhart and Tom Brady. I was thinking of this morning. I'm Kevin Burkhard joined by the seven times

Super Bowl champion Tom Brady. I mean, that's the Fox formula in one sentence. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's really, it's just a weird way to do it. I think you're right about the press release thing. I think that they wanted to have a big victory. And I think that,

I mean, I'm sure I haven't even been paying attention to the reaction online in terms of just actual quality. I mean, whatever your guess as to how good Tom Brady will be at this job is, I think that it's, I mean, you would be naive to think that,

Eddie, that, you know, this wouldn't have been a given, right? If Tom Brady decides he wants to call football games, everybody's lining up with the same dollar figure to let him do it. 100%.

He's in the automatic yes tier. Mm-hmm. And there may be three people in that tier. And, you know, there's, who knows? I mean,

this, I don't know, I can't imagine Tom Brady needed the money, although I'm sure, like, you know, signing the deal a year early probably puts an advance in his checkbook or so, you know, in his bank account that anybody would say yes to. So, you know, the motivation on Brady side is pretty interesting, too.

You know, certainly the, I mean, I think that there's, there's probably an element to his whole retirement and return with the bucks, especially if you believe the Dolphins rumors and some of the other stuff that's out there where Tom Brady probably needed a press release. You know, Tom Brady wanted to see, like, he was in the driver's seat of his career, that no matter what happens, you know, he's got options. He's got the power to be the absolute best at something. I think that, or the top at something in terms of pay and everything else. And, you know, it's probably not, you know, crazy conjecture to think that he sees Tony Romo getting the reaction that he's getting, getting outsized reaction compared to his playing career and thinking, I have to have to have another goal after this chapter ends, right? I have to be. able to pursue greatness in something else. And I'm sure there's a part of him that's going to be competitive about being good at this too, which would be a real interesting turn for Tom Brady, right, who's always been a very, like, outwardly open guy, but not exactly the most expansive guy,

you know, and not exactly the most, you know, not the first guy you would in a vacuum tap for this sort of job. But there's no reason to think he's not going to be great at it, you know. I mean, nobody thought Alex Rodriguez would be good at baseball. And he's turned, and he had, he had a turn. He is sometimes good at baseball. Well, yeah, but no, but he certainly, like, he certainly changed the perception of himself when he started doing it, right? And I think that there's probably a pretty good, that's probably a pretty good comp just

in terms of, well, a lot of different things. But I don't know. I mean, what, what do you think? I mean, do you think, given that anybody would do this, as someone who watches this stuff really closely, would. What do you think Tom Brady is going to be good at this job? Well, can we start with the motivations part of it? Oh, sure.

You landed on something really fascinating there. And you mentioned Romo, but I wonder if the guy that really unlocked this for a lot of people is Peyton Manning. Because you rarely see the super duper, duper, doper, doper star. Let's someone say rarely. The super duper duper star doesn't always jump into the boot because they've already got lots of money. and they don't really have anything to prove. Tony Romo had everything to prove when he became a CBS announcer.

He had not proved it on the field and there was this whole unfinished business aspect. He could say the same thing with Chris Collinsworth. They played in a couple of Super Bowls, but is not one of the all-time great wide receivers in NFL history. So it was like this second career is where I can have another shot and reinvent myself and get some Ws to use our phrase from a second ago.

But I wonder if, athletes looked at what Peyton Manning did and said, oh, he did it. He was really enthusiastic about doing it. He didn't need the money. And he made it work. Yeah. Now, what's interesting is Peyton Manning really made it work on his own terms. What we're hearing today is that Brady is going to do a much more conventional athlete turns into an answer thing, which is you jump into the booth now.

God knows what kind of producer stuff is in his contract. I'm sure it's there. produce shows on Fox, produce streaming stuff, whatever it is. But it's a much more conventional thing. So I do wonder in the sense of the motivation, but maybe it's what you said. It's like he wants something else to do. I'm going to stop this football thing

and I want the thing to be lined up that I am going to go try to be great at next. Yeah, I think if we're playing armchair psychologist, then your point of comparison is probably right. I mean, because he has, Brady has an actual career-long rivalry with Peyton Manning. And he finally just like, I think, sort of put that rivalry to bed on the field. And now he sees Peyton Manning going out and just like setting the world on fire doing something else.

He's just like, well, I can do that too. It's not crazy, right? No. Even if it's not like I want to one up Peyton Manning one more time, it's like Peyton Manning did this. Well, I think that the big thing for the Peyton Manning established is that Carling Games is not a step down in terms of notoriety. for the absolute elite of the elite, right? I mean, Troy Aikman was obviously, was clearly, you know, one of the greatest quarterbacks of his generation,

but his career was relatively short, and, you know, you certainly would put a lot of guys, I think, at the end of the day, ahead of him on the list. Yes. But I think he's part of that conversation, too. But certainly, you know, traditionally, you don't have Michael Jordan calling basketball games, you know?

I mean, it's just not, that's not the sort, it's usually people who are a little bit of lower level or a lot lower level, people who have a real talent for this, it's not always, even though it seems like it in 2022, is not always you step out of the, you know,

you put down the Super Bowl trophy and go right to the broadcast booth. And I think that Manning had held himself up for so long and held himself out of these job considerations that he really did change the way that people talk about what you can do as a megastar, right? I mean, I think that if you're at absolute, elite, then yeah, that it's not, you can continue to be a special attraction and not feel like

you're just being shoehorned into an existing product, which might be perceived as a step down. Now, you're right that Brady's doing something more conventional, and I think it'll remain to be seen how conventional it is. I mean, I think being conventional probably worked to his strengths. Love Kevin Burkhart. I wonder, though, this is just like the scrawl in the margins when I was taking notes. Do you think Brady could have picked his broadcast partner? Sure. Do you think Brady could have picked an like in a

ration, like an unconvincial? Like if did Brady have the negotiating power to be like, I want gronk to be my play by play guy? So it's not Arod picking Matt Vaskursion for Sunday night baseball. It's like I want gronk and me to be the Brady's drunk show. My trainer or like whatever.

Like it could. Yeah. I want this to be kind of a TB12 themed. Yeah. No, I mean like certainly he probably could have picked amongst the Fox lineup, right? And probably, I mean, my guess is there probably wasn't a whole lot of discussion about this going in. You announced Kevin Burkart because you're just making up a press release at this point anyway. And there's no, and there's absolutely no upside to saying anybody except for him. And maybe it'll maybe, maybe you won't be the choice in a year or two years or whatever this happens.

Yeah. I mean, it's like, I think those guys, I think certain people have more. more defined ideas about who they want to work with than others. If we say that like there's a certain level of announcer where you get to dictate a lot of the terms of what you do. And that's not just by the way, who is sitting next to me in the boot. That is how many meetings do I have to attend during the week? Oh, yeah.

Little things like what day do I get to fly to the game? Am I coming in Friday? Am I coming in Saturday or David? am I taking that charter in Sunday morning? Day of. So I'm spending as few nights away from my home and my family as possible. And then, of course, getting that charter out right after the game's over. Those are the kind of little things.

So with Brady, it's an interesting question of whether does he want to work with Burkhart? Did he want to work with Burkhart or did he okay that or whatever it is? It's also like he may just not care. You know, he may not have a huge opinion about that, having never broadcast a game before. I would think he'd be much more interested in, you know, who am I going to work? Do I feel comfortable with this network that they're going to take care of me and make me good at announcing? Yeah. And that's one thing I'd say about Fox and especially compared to some of the other networks, especially like CBS, is I would trust them to put him in a really great position to be good, to coach Brady up if that's, you know.

humanly possible to say with Tom Brady. But to be like, we're going to help you learn how to talk in 22nd bursts. We're going to learn for, you know, to teach you to say to say what you want to say and then lay out so that Burckhardt can do the mass singer promo that needs to come right here. Because as you know, to go back to your question of, will Tom Brady be good at broadcasting? There's, I'm funny and smart and interesting and can talk football in layman's terms. and then there is I can master the mechanics of doing a television show. Those are sort of different things.

And you have to be, you have to do all the stuff of the stuff I mentioned at first, but then you just have to be able to talk in these little tiny slots and listen to people in your ear and process information really quickly. That's not just, hey, a crazy play just happened. Let me tell you what happened.

So, yeah, I mean, And to me, the question with all of these people is not are they interesting, funny, smart, but are they able to be those things on a television broadcast? I think those are two really different questions. Yeah, but I think that the big takeaway of today's news is that that's all totally central to the conversation, but none of it matters right now, right? No.

This announcement is Tom Brady, is Tom Brady, and we have exclusive license to Tom Brady after his playing career. And that's the other part of this. There's this whole tension between do we want the biggest stars on TV announcing the games and doing the studio show? Or do we want the player who is the super wonky guy who is going to be able to explain football better than anybody else? Ideally, we want those two in the same package like John Madden. but I think with what I lean toward, I think I'm supposed to say,

boy, you know, I don't care how big they are. I just want the guy who's going to break down the game. But no, I'm like everybody else. I want big stars on television. Of course I want Tom Brady on television. Of course I do. It would be disingenuous to say, let no, you know. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, certainly you could, I mean, Tom Brady's announcing work. is going to get discussed as much as any play or any ending of any game, right? I mean, that's going to be, it's going to be a going conversation, and that's part of the allure, right? I mean, that's part of allure for everybody involved.

He's going to be the biggest star, you know, in the vast majority of games that he covers. And, yeah, that's part of the package. That's part of the sales pitch. I mean, it's hard to find people, we can just see from, like, the, you know, Monday Night Football, I guess, has been the most public kind of talent search over the past 10, 15 years or whatever in

terms of filling out that booth. And you can see that it's really hard to find not just people who are good at the job, but people with the approval ratings to succeed at the job, right? And, you know, assuming you're not going to get like Dwayne the Rock Johnson in the broadcast booth every week, it's hard to imagine somebody with a higher Q rating to NFL fans than Tom Brady. Obviously, Tom Brady has his detractors, but I think, I mean, you know, people who root for other teams but but i think that i think that his stardom is i mean it's clearly unmatched in the sport so i mean it it's it's one of these things we're like i wish like the conversation is more fun to have when it's not such a given you know when it's not just such a the conversation

is basically a non-starter but it is a non-starter it's just it's it's it's tom brady like what else is there to say of course anybody would have done this it's just so the announcement itself it's just so funny that it would come this far in advance and that and that it just, it would be so, just so vague, you know, I mean, they don't know, right? They don't know when Tom Brady is going to retire. Could be one more year. Could be two more years. But let me put a hypothetical to you in the meantime.

So let's say Kevin Burkhart and Greg Olson go out to call this season on Fox. Let's say the Bucks have a season like they did last year where they're really good, but they get eliminated in the playoffs. Is it absolutely crazy that Tom Brady is the third person in the booth on February 12th, 2023 when Fox does the next Super Bowl? That's a good question. I mean, I think it's not crazy. I think it's, I think that that would be an interesting dynamics conversation in its own

right, right? Because you'd probably be like looking at the clock to see how long until, you know, Brady kicks Olson out of the booth. But who knows? Maybe they'd have good commentary. I mean, good commentary. You mean during the game? We're not going to get to the second quarter and you're out of here. I mean, I think, I think the rational assumption would be if Tom Brady was part of a three-man booth, that it was just a sort of training wheel situation. But who knows? I mean, maybe the chemistry would develop and that's the way they would decide to go. And not there's anything wrong with a training wheel situation. It's a cameo appearance situation. Yeah. We've got Tom Brady. At the very least, going to put him on the pregame show at the Super Bowl if he's not playing in it.

So why wouldn't we put him in the booth? By the way, this actually happened in 1985. ABC decided they did not like O.J. Simpson's announcing. So they benched him before the Super Bowl and they put Joe Thaisman into the boot despite the fact that Joe Thysman was still an active player in the NFL. That really happened. And Joe Thysman called the Super Bowl along with Don Meredith and Frank Gifford. So it's not nuts.

Now maybe you'd say like, look, it's the biggest game of the year. We're really going to throw this person in and mess up whatever chemistry our announcers have. Would it be better to just put him on the pregame show and let him, you know, get all, soak up all the publicity from there. But that's interesting.

Also, of note, Fox's next Super Bowl after that is 2025. So Brady plays this season for the Bucks. Brady plays next season for Dolphins, the 49ers, you tell me. Then Brady goes to Fox in 2024 in a Super Bowl season. That's not crazy. That's not crazy at all. To your point about this being weird and in the future, I agree. But I also think doesn't Fox get to have its cake and eat it too?

Everybody likes Greg Olson. Yeah. So let's say they put Greg Olson. Olson out there. Everybody's really happy by that, but then you have also have this extremely famous announcer that you have signed who's going to appear at some point. So it's not like, oh my gosh, what are we going to do in the fall of 2022? We know what we're going to do in the fall of 2022. We have a team that work together and that everybody likes. But then we also have Tom Brady at some point. Yeah. That sort of makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

I mean, the whole thing is just so wild that you're right. I mean, it could be any amount of time. I mean, listen, you and I, not just in sports, but business all around the, of many varieties. A lot of the time when you see this sort of holding note announcement, it's a pretty, it's pretty safe to assume that whenever it eventually comes to pass, it's not going to look like what we think it's going to look like. And it might not even ever come to pass, you know? I mean, how many times in, I mean, well, it happens a lot. that people would make, hey, we got this big, we got this tent pole movie coming in 2026,

and then it just like, you know, it never happens. And it's like, what's fine, we'll just shuffle something else into the slot. You know, but it's, I mean, I would assume this is going to happen. It seems like everybody's pretty well invested, but who knows? I mean, you know, the announced team, I think, is totally up in the air to that point. But you're right. You have them under contract. At what point does it, would the finances start get triggered?

And to what, I mean, you know, we know that, if they're announcing it. I mean, God, the degree of specificity in the contract, I'm sure is going to be nuts when we see it, right? To have the confidence to announce it this far out,

um, without any sort of concrete start date is, well, I mean, maybe there is a concrete start date built into it and it's, it's going to be next season and they just don't want to say that out loud. They're, you know,

can't say it out loud, but, but, but, um, yeah, I mean, you got to wonder if it's as loose as this feels.

Like, does Tom Brady have the, the will i mean the freedom to like take a season just to take a year off and travel the world between between his playing career in the next season like like we tried that for like six weeks and he was like yeah screw taking taking a season off and traveling the world yeah i want a job i do think fox was in an interesting position here we talked about kind of the humiliation of that network eight men leaves buck leaves we're sitting here going well we didn't we don't have any anything great to, we don't have anything to announce. At least it's on that level at this point.

But I got to think there was, I don't know this, I'm not just hinting this, but I got to think there was something kind of amazing about being able to call everybody. If you're Fox. Yeah. Hey, Aaron Rogers. I know you're thinking about doing one more year with Green Bay. But if the price was 20 million, 25 million, would you think about coming and being an announcer on Fox and calling the Super Bowl this year? Yeah. And on from there, Tom Brady, hey,

oh, you're not ready for this year? In two years, would you be ready to come and call a Super Bowl for Fox? And you get to call the whole list. Yeah. That whole list we're talking about of people that can't be gotten that would never say yes. But you get to, because you have absolutely nothing to lose, and you got Greg Olson already on the roster, you get to try to convince them to say yes.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, and they got their guy. If that's what they did, right? I mean, they went out there and just, it made it happen. And Tom Brady's the highest, he's going to be the highest paid person in that job when he starts. Well, I mean, do we think the Romo trophy won't change hands two or three times before?

I don't know, man. Well, that's, you know, that's, you know, that's the announcer in Power of, when you're talking about the competitiveness of, of quarterbacks, you know, that's got to be, I mean, it wouldn't shock me at all if that was part of the deal that he gets a dollar more than whoever the highest paid person in his role is, because every time there's a new quarterback, a new, you know, starting quarterback contract is bigger than the one that came before. Yeah. Well, how do we know that the other announcer contracts didn't have the same deal?

So when Tom Brady was announced, uh-oh, escalator clause. Yeah, exactly. There's some, there's some incredible agent who's figured this out, or two agents who have, like, colluded, and all of a sudden, a dollar at a time, it's like, it's like an eBay, like, like set your bid or whatever. Like they just, they just, they escalate a dollar at a time up to a trillion dollars or something.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, the whole thing will be very interesting when it comes out, because this is not a normal negotiation, you know, I mean,

unless there's these things happen all the time and we don't hear about it, you know, unless, I mean, if you told me that, that Drew Breeze's deal was, you know, inked 18 months before they announced it,

it wouldn't shock me, shock me. No, or at least, Highly, yeah, highly negotiated and, you know, thought out. Yeah. When you're ready to retire, if you're ready to retire, here's the deal. We're ready to hire you on these terms.

Sure. Can they, can they tear that deal up, by the way, now that we've seen what Drew Breeze is on television? Wait, so that's it. Here's a question, though. I mean, presumably there's nothing preventing, well, there'd be nothing preventing Tom Brady from signing a deal to be the, you know, a host. of an NPR news show when he retired, right? But is there anything preventing him from actually accepting money from Fox

while he's still an active player? No, I don't think so. Greg Olson announced games while he was playing. And I, and you know, if you want to, if you want to bet on something that we could take to the bank right now, whatever Tom Brady's off week is with Tampa Bay, he's going to be in a Fox studio.

Huh. Somewhere. Yeah. Sitting next to Terry Bradshaw. and Howie Long and smiling. And our newest edition or our newest future addition to the Bootham Brady, here we go.

Because if you're Fox, you're going to try to get him on television as much as humanly possible before he actually starts to work for you. Of course. It's true. Well, I think we've had this conversation before we've talked about how like,

you know, broadcasting is a viable career, like alternative, not just a post, not just a retirement gig, but like it's an alternative. This does sort of open up the conversation to, you know, like, like Rob Grancowski, like, you know, like peak Rob Grankowski as big of a personality as he is. Now he's maybe not the best play, you know, you know, by the number is color guy. But if you're that famous and have that much of a personality and that, any, that widely known and you're playing a position like

tied end, like, aren't there going to be people, aren't there going to be people like that who just can get bought, just get, you know, bought out of their, or not literally buy out of their contract, but just hired away

from the NFL and the, in the prime of their career because they're just, they can make more money doing something that's a lot, I mean, that's just as, well,

just as good in some sense. It's somewhere on the board, and it was somewhere on the board for Sean McVeigh this year. Hey, want to walk away from the Rams to do Amazon? Or some,

or have some broadcast, adventure and will pay you more than the Rams are paying you to coach. Yeah, I just think, I think with most of these people, I'll believe it when I see it, that you're walking away from the chance to win Super Bowls and really be somewhere near the peak of your career, that you would leave for broadcasting. you know, Tony Romo, when he went to CBS, had been beaten out by Dak Prescott for the Cowboys' starting quarterback job. He could have certainly gotten a job in the NFL, but his job had been taken away from him. So that's different than somebody who's still playing really high-level football.

Like Aaron Rogers walking away from two MVP's in a row to come to Fox this year, let's say. That would be amazing to me. Yeah. And I just can't believe that it's really hard. It'll happen at some point because as you say, the money's good and you can always change your mind. But their careers are limited, right? You can be a broadcaster till you're 70-something years old. Well, yeah.

And I think that if you're an absolute like apex level quarterback, this is probably not part of the, I mean, it's, you know, I think it's maybe an easier decision to keep playing. And those are going to be the people that attract the most money for sure. And you're right. I think for the vast majority of people, players who are looking into getting into broadcasting, you can always tell yourself, well, that job will be there whenever I retire, right? Something like that will be there. But, I mean, in a season like this, right, where there's just so much uncertainty, a Fox didn't have Olson, right?

If they lost their top guy, had nothing resembling a guy to replace him. I mean, couldn't you imagine a world where they went to some incredibly, you know, some tight end or cornerback or, you know, something like that is a guy who's doing a million commercials and just said just quit we'll put you in the booth tomorrow quit your job and come work for us trying to think who that would be well it's hard to imagine now but could you imagine dion sanders at his peak doing it could you imagine i mean you know could you imagine um i mean you think of the big personality people right like like like you know early season odo beckham junior's probably not that guy but someone approaching someone of that shape you know sure sure you know i mean if it's just somebody who has doing some of this do or

doing the subway commercials. Somebody is already out there and is, you know, it's just a huge personality. Is Russell Wilson on this list? Yeah. Well, that's what I think the quarterback money is so high that it would just be irrational to not say, oh, I'm just going to ink my, I'm just going to, I'm worried about the Hall of Fame here. But there's going to be somebody that comes along who, for whom the calculus is different. I just think the more interesting conversation is what happens when you're a fan of a team or you're a team itself or whatever, you're just like, wait a second. wait a second. Our broadcast partner just poached our player.

You know, like that's going to be a very weird situation. It absolutely is. I don't know. Jason Whitten was kind of a semi-experiment in this. I don't know that he was doing a lot of beloved television commercials at the time. It's funny because I think Tom Brady's career mitigates against this. Because Brady is the case.

And again, he's his own weather system as a quarterback. But he's the case for sticking around. Who knows you might just win. more hardware. And Gronk is too, by the way. Stick around with Tom Brady on the downside. Hell, you got one or two more rings. Brian, I actually have breaking news as we're recording this podcast. Oh, God. Andrew Marchand has chimed in. Tom Brady's contract to call games for Fox Sports is 10 years and $375 million. Which is more than he's ever made, I believe, as a starting quarterback

in the NFL. 375 million. I mean, I don't even know what to do with that. Tom Brady is making, like the gross of a Transformer sequel, domestic gross of a Transformer sequel to call Games for Fox. 37.5 million dollar,

am I doing my math, right? 37.5 a year? Yeah. Wow. So David, it wasn't a dollar more than Troy Aikman. it was more than twice what Troy Aikman is making. Yeah.

So that's not just the Tony Romo trophy. We just threw the Tony Romo trophy in the trash, and we renamed it the Tom Brady trophy. I guess we'll start hearing about escalator clauses if they exist, starting about 15 minutes. Mr. Patero, they got Troy's agent on line one. Oh my God, that's so great.

If there is an escalator clause, this could be the deal. There's an old, since I got to get my wrestling, my wrestling history bit in here since it's the podcast. But there's a longstanding conspiracy theory that's not true. That when Brett Hart left WWF for WCW, it was Vince McMahon sent him there to help bankrupt the company. It's like, I know you can't afford,

or just in general, let guys go there to run up the bill. This could be an incredible chess move by Fox. Like, let's just announce a contract we don't have to pay until next year. We changed our mind. Knowing that all these other companies have to match the deal for their top guys. So if it's 37.5 million, doesn't Tom Brady have to announce the Super Bowl this year unless he's playing in it? Well, that's just it. But wait, what if he's not getting paid this year? What if they have to pay? What if it would trigger a $37.5 million payment from to call one game?

Tom, Tom, do us a favor. Rupert just wrote you a check for $375 million. Can you do the Super Bowl this year? But I guess this is an interesting answer to a question, because what is the price to get a player of Tom Brady's? Well, I think that's what we've been dancing around the whole time. What's the price to get him and what's the price to get him to commit a year or two years out, right? Because that's even, that's an even higher price tag. To get that press release. Yeah. That Lachlan Murdoch, by the way, announced this on Fox's earnings call today.

Yeah. So this was not just for the sports media watchers of America. This is for Wall Street. This is for everybody. What is it going to take for us to be able to announce that today? That's really interesting. To the question of, will Tom Brady be good at this job? I think one hiccup that you see sometimes when you have the mega, mega, mega star is that they're afraid to criticize other people.

They've become brand ambassadors for football. So if Dak Prescott has a bad game, if Josh Allen has a bad game, is Tom Brady going to say, in so many words, this guy really sucked. now I think Peyton Manning has shown the workaround of this a little bit Tony Romo too where instead of Mr. Hot Take guy you're more like professor football right and your whole thing is X's and O's enthusiasm for the game breaking down plays and maybe that absolves you of having to just crush somebody yeah you make of that I mean knowing nothing about Tom Brady to the human being, I could easily imagine it going both ways, right? I mean, he's obviously an incredibly intelligent football, like his football IQ is just off the charts, and he'll be able to

just break things down if he so chooses, one would presume at the level or above the level of either the other two guys you mentioned. I'm not talking about broadcasting ability, but just in terms of like, could he explain it? I mean, it might be out of, it might be above our heads, but yeah, he could, he could do that job. I mean, it's also kind of easy, again, again, as someone who doesn't know the dude, to imagine Tom Brady being, I mean, listen, every time that he talks about other players, his teammates and people on other teams, start his entire career. He's been the most generous human being you could imagine, right? But you could also see a world in which post-career, Tom Brady is just a little bit more of a,

you know, a little bit more interested in, like, protecting his own legacy by, by, you know, roughing up the edges on other people, you know? I mean, it's, you can, you can, Charles Barkley, Pat. Yeah, or, or someone who's just so dedicated to the sport, so dedicated, you know, who feels like he had to work so hard for every little scrap that he got that he would be disappointed in somebody who wasn't, who didn't seem to be achieving the same level, right? I mean, you can see a world in which he was more of a sort of antagonistic voice than the other people you mentioned. But I think that what the track record is what we have to go off of and the track record is that he's probably going to be overly kind. He's going to be like,

and, and, you know, the best version of that is the Tony Romo version of it. it, right? Is the, I'm just so excited to be here. I just love this sport so much that you can find some happiness. You can find something nice to say about any given moment. And that's Ramos' weakness. And I think I much prefer the Peyton Manning approach where you do get some more sorrow than in anger disappointment. When a coach calls the wrong play, when a quarterback plays like crap, you can be like, I am visibly disappointed in what I'm seeing. If I'm a fan of football and a fan of great football, particularly great offense, I'm mad because you are not doing that right now. That's the good lane to be in here if you're going to go to the professor football round.

The thing that Peyton Manning 100% has and Tony Romo about 90% had when they started announcing is the broad perception that they have good senses of humor. Right. So they're able. Right. And Peyton had done all those commercials. and Saturday Night Live, everything else, you know? Romo too, by that point, yeah.

Yeah, Peyton Manning can go out there and just be like, well, look at this buster, you know, look at this guy. Look at this guy just like fucking up out there. And you take it with a little bit more humor than if it was just literally, almost anybody else in the world, right? Where you would presume the worst.

You know, you presume bad motives, whatever else. So they've got that going for him. I don't know if Brady has that. Unless Brady's actually just secretly hilarious or, you know, personally hilarious. And that would change that whole thing. I mean, this is, I like this was already an impossible conversation to have and now $375 million.

Geez, Louise. I mean, three, that's, I mean, is that so much money? God, that is just so much money. It's so much money. It's so much money. But as I've said before, the thing about these jobs is people say, well, why are you paying them so much money? Because they don't bring in ratings by themselves.

to which I think a totally valid response is, well, if they're not attached to ratings in any way, why not pay them any amount of money? Yeah. You're already making it up. You made up $4 million a year. You made up $10 million a year.

Why not make up $37 million a year? Like, why not? It's all value to the company. It's symbolic value. And, you know, more to the bigger point about television, television right now, live television, is more and more live NFL games.

Yeah. If you look at the Fox network, it consists right now of live NFL games, the mass singer and zombie Simpsons, as far as I can tell. There's nothing else on the network. You don't have to pay Ed O'Neill to sign for another season of married with children,

and if you did, it wouldn't matter. People are watching it to what? This is where the money's going to go, to the extent linear television and the network still exist, this is where they're going to stick their money. Because this is what they got. I want to ask you one question.

Wait, before we get off the money thing, our colleague Megan Schuster, and I'm going to put her on the spot, so I hope that she's correct. Just dropped into works like that that 375 is more than the total of Brady's NFL earnings. So he will make more money from Fox Sports

in the term of this contract than he has made from the NFL. So he's taking a pay cut to play a couple more years of football. football is what we're saying. I don't know how much he's making this season, but yeah, but it was low. It was lowish, right? Because he kind of, he took a little bit of a mini, I'm deferring to my NFL people here, but he took a little mini pay cut so that the bucks could sign the players they needed.

Yeah, so I mean, but it's just, I mean, that's just an unbelievable. And when we talk about money, especially when we're talking about quarterbacks and announcers is just funny money, right? It doesn't have, there's like, there's no frame of reference. Well, this one comes with a prepackaged frame of reference. It's just an ungodly amount of money. Yeah, we're getting back to the Madden thing where he was making more than any player in the NFL in 1994 to call football games for Fox as it happens. Brady is going to be making more than 95% of the players in the NFL to call football games for Fox.

Yeah. That is pretty incredible. That's great. I know we talked about gronk too much, but I mean, with that kind of money, got to, people got to start thinking about all these players that, you know, Brady's security blanket team. He's sort of dragging people like that into the booth, man. I just like having gronk around when we play.

Of course, I don't want to. Exactly. Exactly. All these dudes that he's been like throwing like over the middle passes to the safety guy. I mean, safety passes all throughout his career. Like, yeah, man, it's a good reason to get in good with the star of that wattage. You know, you can just take you anywhere. Aaron Andrews, you got one sideline.

We're going to give gronk the visiting sideline. You're going to have Wes Welker. manning the end zone cam. Last thing before we go, I think if you and I had looked into a crystal ball two years ago and had seen that broadcasting was going to go absolutely crazy this year, that teams that had been together forever weren't going to be together, at least on the same network,

that Amazon was going to get into this business and offer a new alternative way of watching NFL games, I think I would have predicted that this would have been a chance for new and younger people to be part of number one NFL announcing teams. Yeah. But ESPN and executives would have looked at each other and said, Mina Kimes, Monday Night Football. It's time.

Yeah, for sure. Amazon would have said like Pat McAfee, let's do it, right? Let's get crazy. Fox would have said the same thing with Greg Olson. But look what do we have here, dude? we have now very established people basically shuffling places. Aikman, Buck, Al Michaels, Kirk Herb Street, who's been a college giant college football star forever now. And then we have Tom freaking Brady.

It is weird. I mean, for one thing, I'm pretty sure Pat McAfee, the rumors of Pat McAfee's discussion with Amazon are ongoing. I don't think, I don't think that Pat McAfee's out of the running. But that he would be the number one, you know. Oh, yeah. And you might be right. that like it's maybe this is all alternate streams and all these people are actually part of broadcast just not on the conventional number one thing.

It is weird that with all, it's not just the amount of money. It's not just the new media. It's that with as many people, as many organizations as there are, assembling rosters, it is interesting that no one took a flyer on, well, let's just see it. Let's just do it this different way. Let's, let's, let's zag, you know, when everybody else is trying to outbid each other for Troy Aikman. Well, what if we just did a different thing? You know, we could use that money on, like, dude,

I mean, if you're Fox, I don't know, how many people watch, how many people watch Fox Sports every day? If you're like, how about instead of signing, instead of signing Tom Brady to this contract, we just say, we'll just send 50 bucks to everybody that watches our games every week. Choose us over CBS. Yeah. And we will send you, and take a picture of your television and we will send you $50. Yeah. But I mean, but it is interesting that, yeah, you're right. I mean, that no one's really gone that way. It's been, it has turned into a very sort of, traditional looking thing. And Tom Brady is obviously, again,

not a lot of stars of his wattage have had this role, but it does feel like a very conservative move. Well, at once an outrageous move, dollar figure aside. And a conservative move at the same time. Like, we're going for the biggest name, the biggest curating humanly possible. I mean, look, this is an interesting.

I think we have to call these sliding doors moments here, David, that's part of our ringer contracts. But door number one here was Kevin Burkart and Greg Olson. Young, new, at least new-ish, new in Olson's case, certainly. Or Tom Brady, $375 million. They walked through door number two. Yeah. Well, they walk through both doors.

That's the beauty of it, right? They have as many doors as they, it could be a three-man booth forever, you know, and probably, I mean, it'd be a lot of money, I guess. but at this point, once you're paying $375 million, does it matter what the other two guys are making? I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, it could be a lot of fun.

I mean, honestly, if you told me this in a vacuum, if you told me this just a month ago over a beard, just like, I heard a rumor that Tom Brady's about to get over $30 million a season to call NFL games, I would have thought, I would have thought that it was like necessarily handcuffed to a deal. where like Fox was going to get whatever the equivalent of Sunday night football is, that Fox was going to get a time slot that nobody else got or something, you know,

it's just something to actually just like maximize the value of that deal. And who knows? I mean, you talk about the ratings that football is getting. We might be at a place in the next 10 years where like every single NFL game is being streamed without NFL competition, you know, on somewhere, you know? We could just have nonstop football from Sunday morning at 9 a.m. until, you know, Tuesday afternoon or something. But, but it's that, I mean, it's, it, it, it, it would, I guess nothing would surprise me

at this point. An announcement that big, like, you could really just see that sort of manifesting in a lot of different ways. How could it at this point, dude? I mean, you think about it. I mean, you think about the morning and Tom Brady signed a $375 million contract with Fox. Yeah. How would could be surprising at this point other than Fox not showing NFL football.

That'd be the only, that'd be the only surprising thing. A network saying, we're doing it. We are unhooking ourselves from the NFL. That used to happen. It's become too expensive. We can't make money off this. Yeah. That is what.

I mean, and I mean, it would just be, I think that would be pretty shocking at this point. I think it's all trending in the other direction, right? I mean, this is, this contract is absolutely proof of it. We are going to give the NFL a bigger and tighter hug than we ever have before. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes back later this week. I think with more lukewarm takes about the media.

See you then, David. See you later, Brian.