‘Is this real?’ – Fox’s Burkhardt joins elite Super Bowl play-by-play club
It’s not lost on Fox’s Kevin Burkhardt that he’s about to join a pretty exclusive club – that he’ll be one of only a dozen to call play-by-play on a Super Bowl telecast in the game’s 57year history. And he’s pretty psyched about it.
“I looked that up when I got the job,” the New Jersey native admits. “Like it’s important to me. I don’t take it lightly. And then the other part of it is I’m really excited to do it with Greg (Olsen, analyst). I’ve known him for a long time, we’re really good friends and to kind of be able to jump on this journey with him this year ... and go through this together, I’m thrilled. It’s fun.”
Burkhardt will be in the booth alongside analyst Olsen at State Farm Stadium near Phoenix to call the action on Super Bowl LVII between the champions of the AFC and NFC on Sunday, Feb. 12.
For Fox Sports, this represents a pretty significant changing of the guard. For years since 2005, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman fronted its
Super Bowl coverage. But when they departed for ESPN prior to this season, the network promoted Burkhardt and Olsen to its “A” team.
Now ready to do his first NFL title game, Burkhardt acknowledges that there will be a few butterflies as well as the temptation to do more on what is usually the broadcasting network’s highest-rated telecast of the year. But in the end, he says, you just have to treat it as another day at the office.
“I can promise you that the way I go about it and the way that I’ve done it for 10 years at Fox is going to be the same exact way,” he says. “You know, when I got elevated this year when Joe went over to ESPN, every offseason you kind of look at your routine and what you could do differently to make it better and just kind of self-evaluate. But I didn’t change anything about the way that I go about my business because it’s what got me here.”
And “here” is alongside such distinguished playby-play men ranging from Buck, Al Michaels and Jim Nantz to Pat Summerall, Curt Gowdy and
Jack Buck (Joe’s father). Burkhardt allows that at some point on Sunday, he’ll likely take a step back, look around and drink in the experience, in what is really the pinnacle of any broadcaster’s career.
“I’ve done that a lot ...,” he says. “You know, there’s a part of me that’s like, ‘Is this real?’ ” “We did a Vikings/giants (Wild Card) game,” he continues, “and middle of the game – it’s a great game, there’s a key third down, the crowd’s going nuts – and (Greg and I) laid out and I just kind of looked around for a second, took a quick snapshot in my head and just (thought), ‘How fun is this to be here for this.’ So I absolutely will do that, no doubt.”