Jason Bell and Osi Umenyiora have become the faces of NFL coverage in the UK and won a host of fans with their on-screen bromance.
But their relationship first started to blossom in the New York Giants locker room after an injury to Osi in 2006 gave Jason the chance to catch his eye.
“We were really good friends in the locker room,” Jason recalls. “But it’s funny…
“The story of that is that Osi was injured for a game, and he get a chance to watch me on TV. He came back and said, ‘hey, I like how you play!’, and he was really my friend after that. I just had to prove myself.”
HAVE YOUR SAY! Who will win the Super Bowl this season? Join the discussion in the comments section.
“All in the play!” Osi jokes. “I don’t like a bad player, you’ve got to be a good player!”
“The thing is, I never used to watch anybody else, all I used to watch was defensive lineman, so I never really had an appreciation of how good Jason was.
“Then I got hurt, and I’m sitting back there watching the game and he’s just making plays. I’m like, ‘wow, that guy can really play ball!”. When I saw him, that was the first thing I said to him.”
Nearly a decade later, circumstances threw the pair back together to take their friendship on-screen across the pond.
Now several years into their journey and having established themselves as firm favourites with NFL fans across the UK, they are reunited ahead of the new season at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
“I was so excited to see him,” Jason says with genuine excitement. “I missed him, and I missed this.
“Every year when it all restarts, I’m so excited like it’s the first time we started on this journey together.”
“It’s kind of cool,” Osi adds. “Our work season coincides with the NFL season, so it’s almost like we never stopped playing! It’s like we’re still in the locker room.”
Their partnership has grown so much that one of the UK’s top presenters, Laura Woods, wanted to be part of it. They are now together to launch a new era of NFL coverage in the UK as they take their hugely popular NFL Show to ITV with Woods joining as the big-name host.
“I’m very excited,” she says. “It’s easy, isn’t it? Working with pundits, what you really want is people who communicate well and who you get on well with, which is exactly what I’ve got.”
Woods worked on the NFL a number of years ago during her time at Sky Sports before he career took off. Now, she hosts the talkSPORT Breakfast Show, presents boxing on DAZN and fronts up ITV’s coverage of England’s Lionesses. What tempted her back into American Football?
“Jason Bell did not leave me alone!” Laura reveals. “My phone was going off the hook from Agent Jason, basically.
“But to be honest it didn’t take much, because I still watched the NFL Show, even though I haven’t been involved until this point.
“These two as broadcasters, I think they’re two of the best that we’re lucky enough to be able to watch in this country.
“I’ve always thought that, and whoever is at the helm, be it Dan (Walker) or Mark (Chapman), I don’t think anyone needs to get the best out of them, they get the best out of themselves and each other.
“I’ve seen them touch on highly political topics, social issues, really deep stuff like that which I can completely connect to.
“It wasn’t a difficult answer, is what I’m trying to say. As long as I could make it work with my schedule I wanted to be a part of it, and when you’re covering sport there’s more to show people and I think these two are shining examples of that so it was an easy decision for me.”
There is an element of pressure in joining a well-established on-screen double act. Asked if there will be any new innovations, Osi jokingly exclaims: “Laura Woods!” as Jason adds: “We’ve got magic sprinkled all over it now!”
“See, there’s pressure on me now,” Laura responds with a smile. “So much pressure - if I’m rubbish at this then I’ll be in trouble!”
The fact is that, like Osi and Jason, Laura radiates a warm and infectious energy and already seems to fit in perfectly as the existing pair bounce off one another.
They respond to her glowing praise with a joke about it being worth the money they slipped to her away from sight. When discussing the Buffalo Bills, Jason’s pick as Super Bowl favourites, Osi explains: “They don’t pass my smell test,” to which Laura jokes, “I had to go through that smell test to get the job!”
The pair poke fun at her as she reveals her support for the Detroit Lions, the NFL’s perennial underachievers over the past two decades as she justifies her left-field choice.
“At the time, I was very influenced by the interviews I was doing, and at the time I was doing a lot of interviews with the Lions…,” she explains.
“My investment in that team will not change, I’ll stick with them. I don’t think you can ever pick a team and ditch them at any point in your life, I don’t think it works like that.
“I’m an Arsenal fan, right, and in the last 10 years I could’ve had very good reasons to ditch them but I would never ditch them. With the Lions, I’ve nailed my colour to that mast!”
Whilst the Lions mast is not one that Jason and Osi can also get behind, the trio are united in their passion for the NFL and its place in the UK. They are jointly responsible for flying the flag on free-to-air coverage and are as eager as anyone to see the sport continue to grow.
This year sees a major milestone crossed off as the Green Bay Packers become the 32nd and final team to play a regular season International Series game in London. With that in mind, there is much focus on the overriding question - what is the next step?
“It would be a franchise, wouldn’t it?” Woods says. “The last time I was working in NFL, pretty much full-time, five or six years ago, that conversation was happening then and we kind of thought it might happen by now.
“I heard a stat that the growth is 3% and of that around 30% actually is women coming into the sport, so I think it’s huge to have that growth in that period of time.
“It will keep going if we’re all going to games, but to have a franchise here that British fans could really get a hold of and feel it’s their own, for me that’d be the best thing.
“The idea of sport in this country is that its super tribal, isn’t it? In sports other than soccer it’s not quite as tribal, but if you had a franchise here I think a little bit of that tribal nature would creep in.
“If you give people something that they feel is theirs, they become quite tribal in this country, they really buy into it and that can only help the game to grow over here.”
“I think she’s 100% right,” Osi adds. "There really is no other step you can go to other than having a franchise, that would be the next logical step.
“The growth has been tremendous year in, year out and you can keep on playing more games here, but I don’t know if that is going to exponentially increase the number of fans we have here.
“So in terms of growth of the game, I think the next logical step would be a franchise, but I think we are still quite far away from that.”
Whilst there is some uncertainty around what the future holds, the undeniable fact is the NFL is here to stay in the UK - and Laura Woods, Jason Bell and Osi Umenyioura have a big part to play as the front of ITV’s coverage of the next three years.
Watch Laura Woods, Jason Bell and Osi Umenyiora on ITV's The NFL Show every Friday evening, starting on September 9.
