How Fox’s 25 seasons of doing NFL has changed the game

Terry Bradshaw thought his career as a football analyst was over in 1993 when CBS lost the NFL rights to Fox. But instead of going back to cattle ranching, he has had a front-row seat to the biggest sports broadcasting startup of the past quarter-century.

“It seems like an eternity. We all have occasionally talked about where we started. We’ve had all of these innovations that has transformed broadcasting on television,” Bradshaw said.

It was Bradshaw who helped usher in Fox’s coverage of the NFL in 1994 riding a horse around Los Angeles before arriving at the Fox set in Hollywood. That entrance helped set the tone that still drives the network’s coverage and has included eight Super Bowls.

“Terry is what Fox attitude is all about,” said Joe Buck, who has gone from one of the announcers for regional games to the voice of Fox’s major properties. “They played that during the preseason seminar this year and I got choked up. It was a beautiful TV moment.”

David Hill, who built Fox Sports and came up with many of its innovations, still considers Bradshaw his most important hire.

“He is the core of what Fox Sports is — he’s funny, selfdeprecating, but gets the job done,” Hill said.

That core was put in motion 25 years ago this month when Fox won the rights to broadcast NFL games for $1.6 billion over four years. Besides its personalities, the network has given us the scorebox, audio that brings viewers closer to the game, the onehour pregame show, and a big production feel for sporting events.

The fact that Hill was able to build a sports division from scratch in eight months remains incredible considering most networks now take two to three years to build.

“It was so intense that it stays with you. Thinking back, though, we never had a chance to second guess anything because every day was important,” he said.

Many of the announcers and production personnel that started with Fox in 1994 are still there as the network is in its 25th season of broadcasting the NFL. Bart Simpson is still going strong on Sunday night’s, but Fox has become a grown-up network.

“We’ve grown from the rebellious new kid on the block and are now looked at as a responsible producer of major sports. We’re now the establishment,” said Richie Zyontz, the lead producer for Fox’s top NFL game as well as coordinating producer for the network’s NASCAR coverage.

The NFL’s decision to go with Fox continues to reverberate on a number of levels, not only with football but in the way sports rights costs are perceived among network executives. Among the things we have learned:

Football is entertainment

Fox’s credo of “same game, new attitude” really applied to Hill. The affable Australian, who had built sports networks in England and Australia, was tasked with building Fox Sports in eight months.

Hill offered a fresh set of eyes when it came to evaluating pro football on television, and the first opinion he had is there wasn’t enough fun or entertainment on Sunday broadcasts.

Hill’s vision of Fox’s philosophy took root with the pregame show. Not only was it an hour, but it was done in Los Angeles instead of New York. He had a simple formula for his pregame crew: a host, former offensive player, former defensive player and coach.

“David understood that he wanted the viewer entertained. We cover the news but we tend to do things a little more jovial,” Bradshaw said.

Hill, who now runs his own production company after leaving Fox in 2015, liked Howie Long after seeing one of his interviews, but wasn’t sold after an audition. It was so vanilla that Hill told Long to come back the next day with a different attitude. Long was more relaxed in the second audition and was hired.

Bradshaw and Long have been the backbone of Fox’s pregame show despite their diverse personalities.

“Terry and I couldn’t be more different, but we have caught lightning in a bottle. It just works,” Long said.

Hill also suggested having a comedian do predictions and having a weather report as a segment. The Los Angeles setting also gave the show a different vibe, which is what he wanted all along.

“All the cameramen for the pregame had worked on sitcoms during the week. They all wanted to work on football,” he said. “The camaraderie of everyone flowed throughout the entire unit.”