Steve Levy understood being replaced by Joe Buck on Monday Night Football job. But losing out to Chris Fowler was tougher to take.
For two seasons, Levy held one of the most prestigious jobs in sports broadcasting as the voice of Monday Night Football before being replaced by Buck. Levy wasn’t going to lament losing the gig to Buck and Troy Aikman, but after one season as the No. 2 voice of Monday Night Football, ESPN replaced Levy again. Levy joined the most recent episode of the Awful Announcing Podcast and discussed being the former voice of Monday Night Football.
“The voice of Monday Night Football is a superstar job and I just never considered myself that,” Levy admitted. “I’ve just been one of the guys… I had always hoped that would be long term, but Joe Buck comes along, of course. You have the opportunity to go and get Joe and Troy, I totally get it. And that’s why, quite frankly, I wasn’t devastated when that happened.”
That’s not to say Levy didn’t want to keep the job. He never considered himself a superstar broadcaster, but Levy hoped to become associated with Monday Night Football for long enough that ESPN would no longer feel the need to go big name hunting. Still, Levy’s self-awareness helped him to understand ESPN getting Buck and Aikman when the opportunity presented itself.
Following the addition of Buck and Aikman, Levy received the consolation prize of being the No. 2 voice of Monday Night Football, with a package of three or four broadcasts each season. ESPN, however, replaced Levy with Fowler after just one season in that role.
“That’s tougher to take,” Levy admitted. “I’ll be honest, that was a tough one to take. There’s lots of conversations that go on that I’m not privy to and at the end of the day, I’m an employee and I’ve got bosses and I do what I’m told. I thought whatever the three or four games that we were getting on that second package, I thought that was a really nice landing spot after the two years I had, under the circumstances. And it wasn’t meant to be. Chris is obviously a great broadcast too, he’s terrific.”
As ESPN’s top play-by-play voice for college football, Fowler is more than capable of being the company’s No. 2 Monday Night Football announcer. But he’s not Joe Buck. In the pecking order of sports broadcasters, Levy is undoubtedly on Fowler’s level. Getting replaced by a Hall-of-Famer is one thing, but being bumped for a contemporary was borderline disrespectful by ESPN.
