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This week on The Pat Bev Podcast with Rone, NFL on Fox color analyst Greg Olsen explained why going from being an athlete to being a member of the media isn’t as easy as people think.
“I think everyone just assumes that transition is easy and seamless and one day you just get done playing and every network and every media outlet in the world calls you up and says, ‘Hey, come do a pod, come do a show, come be on our desk, call games, whatever,” Greg Olsen explained.
And the reality is, as you know firsthand, Pat, it’s a lot of work. It’s hard to transition into that world. It’s hard to find your voice. It’s hard to find the right opportunities. There’s so many different outlets that guys can do. You know, you can host your own show, you can sit behind the desk, you can commentate games. And for me, it was commentating games that I found pretty quickly was my path.
“And I was fortunate when I was playing my last couple of years in ’17 and in ’19, my bye weeks when everyone else was going on vacation and hanging, I was going to call games as a current player on my bye week. I was fortunate that (Fox) gave me these opportunities. It was something I was laying the foundation on before my last season in 2020, where I knew once my playing days were over, I had laid enough of a foundation to have some opportunities with Fox to do that right out of the game and go right into the booth.
“After trying a lot of different outlets and a lot of different things that a lot of people never even saw on TV because they weren’t real big shows, calling games kind of became something I thought I could pursue. And that’s really where I’ve put my interest in, obviously, since I retired.”
Greg Olsen, who will lose his gig as lead color commentator for the NFL on Fox in 2024 to Tom Brady despite winning a Sports Emmy, has already stated that he is coming for Brady’s job.