Greg Olsen was extremely close to landing the lead color analyst role at FOX Sports, alongside Kevin Burkhardt.
That dream was prolonged when the company announced that Tom Brady was going to a sign a massive 10-year deal worth $375 million to be the lead analyst after he retired. In the interim, Olsen still gets to build his resume and hold onto the lead role.
His initial reaction was pretty standard when it comes to losing to Brady.
“But when you lose out on Tom Brady, it’s like this sucks, at least he doesn’t take the job now, maybe I can have my time in the sun and keep his seat warm until he gets there,” Olsen said after the news broke. “But yeah, if you’re going to lose, at least lose to him. I can at least live with the only person in the world who beat me out was Tom Brady. I can live with that.”
Olsen recently joined the The Adam Schefter Podcast and said he was happy with how FOX handled the situation.
“It was just a long offseason of speculation and rumor and reports of who was going to get the job,” Olsen told Schefter, transcribed by WEEI. “We always knew we were in the mix. We [Olsen and Burkhardt] weren’t exactly sure who else was in the mix. We had some conversations over the winter.”
“When the Brady news broke, we weren’t exactly sure what that meant. We weren’t exactly sure where we fit into that picture. To FOX’s credit, they were super upfront and they called us and they said this was too good of an opportunity to pass up, but we would love you and Kevin to be back together again and call this year as the A crew and call the best game that we have.”
As aforementioned, Olsen still has the opportunity for the near future and he’s going to take full advantage of it.
“It’s a great opportunity for me to do it. I don’t know if it’s going to be one year or two years. For the time being, I’m going to go out there and try to have a great year and give people a fun broadcast.”
