How Jake Jolly Brought Bands Like Phish And the Grateful Dead To Fox Sports NFL Broadcasts

If you’ve ever watched football, NASCAR, or college football on Fox and suddenly thought, Wait, is that Phish?, you’re not imagining things. That’s the handiwork of Jake Jolivette aka Jake Jolly, a producer at Fox Sports who’s found a way to weave his love of bands like Phish, the Grateful Dead, and Widespread Panic with some of the biggest stages in sports broadcasting.

In the debut in-studio edition of The Mostly Occasionally Show, I sat down with Jake to explore that exact fusion—how he quietly laces NFL and college football broadcasts (and occasionally NASCAR) with jam-band tunes with the help of his team at Fox Sports. Just this past weekend, for instance, he slipped Karina Rykman’s “Joyride” into the second quarter of the Eagles vs. Steelers game, gave a hometown nod by spinning Rusted Root’s “Send Me On My Way,” and dropped Phish’s “Bird of a Feather” for Philadelphia fans—part of a playful sonic scavenger hunt for those with sharp ears.

You can watch the full conversation on our Mostly Occasionally Show YouTube channel embedded below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. 

Remember When Phish’s “Tweezer” Opened the Super Bowl?

Jake’s jam-band-meets-sports origin story goes back to the 2017 Super Bowl between the Patriots and Falcons. “I was producing the intro videos before the teams run out,” he recalls. “I wanted something big, something with a build. There’s that crescendo. And I thought, ‘Tweezer’. It just felt right.”

That little spark over a Ving Rhames voiceover introducing the Falcons at the beginning of the game ignited the jam community. “After the game, my cousin texted, ‘Dude, did you make those videos? Everyone’s talking about them,’” Jake says. “Then I saw a Relix article where Trey Anastasio’s old tour manager Brad Sands had messaged Trey. Trey was like, ‘I guess I’m rooting for the Falcons tonight.’ That was a cool moment for me.”

Stealth Jams on Thursday Night Football

A one-off experiment quickly became Jake’s signature move. “When Fox got Thursday Night Football, an executive told me, ‘We need fresh music for breaks, not just classic rock.’” Jake leapt at the chance. “I threw in Phish, Allman Brothers, Widespread Panic—even some Moe.”

He chose songs that pop in short TV segments. “’Chalk Dust Torture’ or ‘First Tube’ work even if you don’t know Phish,” Jake explains. “They’ve got energy and instrumentation that fit right in.”

These stealth jams didn’t stay stealth for long. Good Morning Football host Peter Schrager famously texted Jake during a broadcast: “Are you playing Phish right now? My group chat is losing it.” He took it to Twitter, giving away Jake’s secret as the wizard behind the curtain pushing the musical buttons.

College Football and Full-Show Easter Eggs

Jake and his team goes even deeper on college football broadcasts, sometimes basing entire bumper-music sets on classic Phish shows that are licensable. “I’ll take something like the Nutter Center ’98 setlist and play the songs in order,” Jake says on Mostly Occasionally Show, grinning. “People will be like ‘Oh, he’s doing AC/DC Bag now.’ It’s subtle, but the fans who notice really get a kick out of it.”

It’s a nod to jam culture’s love of unexpected moments.

“That’s the beauty of it. If you know, you know. If you don’t, it’s not going to bother you.”

Jake Jolly’s Jam Band Origin Story

Jake’s roots as a music fan trace back to the early ’90s Grateful Dead scene. “My cousin dragged me to Deer Creek in ’92. I didn’t know the Dead well, but the community and vibe were incredible,” he says. Soon he was planning his own summer tours. Next came Phish via a tape mislabeled “Fish.”

“My first Phish show was in Cincinnati. Midway through, the fire alarm went off and Trey said, ‘Sorry, folks, we have to evacuate.’ When we came back, they opened with Hendrix’s Fire. That stuck with me,” Jake says.

In 2018, Jake finally found himself back at a Phish show—this time at The Forum in Los Angeles.

Weekends in sports broadcasting had kept him from seeing the band for 18 years, but that night he brought along his wife (a first-timer) and rediscovered the lively scene he remembered from the ’90s: the makeshift Shakedown Street with vendors and fans and the simple thrill of being surrounded by smiling faces stoked for a great night of live music.

During the set, he struck up a conversation with a neighbor who couldn’t believe Jake had gone so long without seeing Phish—so much so that by encore’s end, he turned and said, “You’re not gonna wait another 18 years now, are you?” For Jake, the answer was immediate and obvious: once the band kicked into their opening tune, he was right back in the groove, wondering why he ever left.

The Jam-Football Feedback Loop

Between the typical jock jams, classic rock riffs, and even pop hits from artists like Sabrina Carpenter, Jake runs a stealth mission. This past week in Philadelphia, after a routine field goal, his team slipped in The Dead Milkmen’s “Punk Rock Girl.” In the 2023 Eagles-Chiefs Super Bowl, he cued up Goose’s “Hungersite”—which got a big Instagram shoutout from the band.

Meanwhile, he fields the occasional assumption from sports-loving music fans that any jam-band track on TV must be his handiwork.

I joked to Jake that it’s sort of Fox Sports’ little watermark now. “People hear ‘Shakedown Street’ on CBS and tag me, even if I wasn’t the one playing it.”

But for Jake, it’s not about shoehorning jam tunes into primetime. There’s a natural chemistry between improv-driven music and the unpredictability of sports—maybe you catch a snippet of “First Tube” after a dramatic play, or a quick hit of “Estimated Prophet” before commercial, perfectly matching the game’s momentum.

It’s a synergy that both worlds share, and for those who catch these nods, there’s no better feeling than sharing in the groove with like-minded others online while watching from your couch.

“I didn’t think, like, ‘Well, I’m gonna start using this a lot more’ or whatever,” Jake says. “I just thought it was cool.”