The Super Bowl is the pinnacle of sports broadcasting with well over 100 million people expected to watch Sunday evening’s broadcast on Fox. And even though Fox will be heading into the night with a rookie broadcast team of Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen, it sounds like Fox Sports leadership isn’t too worried.
In an interview with the New York Post, Fox Sports executive producer Brad Zager said that he’s confident in Olsen heading into Sunday night’s Super Bowl broadcast.
“There are one thousand things to worry about the week of the Super Bowl, Greg Olsen going out there and doing an amazing broadcast is not on my list,” Zager told The Post.
Despite emerging as Fox’s top NFL analyst and signing a new five-year contract with the network, Olsen’s future with Fox has come into question with the looming addition of Tom Brady to the Fox NFL team in 2024. But that does not change Zager’s view of Olsen.
“When I got this job, Greg was my first pick,” Zager told The Post. “I was all about making sure Greg Olsen was there at the time. He was below Joe and Troy. But once we saw what Greg could do during a full season, we had no doubts. I just loved Greg Olsen.
“If you could design from scratch, somebody coming off the field to the broadcast booth, you would give them so many characteristics that we see in Greg every day. His passion for broadcasting, his passion for being part of the production crew, his passion for learning and getting feedback and being coached to be better and zero ego.
“He just came in and was like, ‘I’m the new guy here. I want to be great at this, help me get there.’ And I think what people at home have seen is the sum of all those things.”
It’s clear the young 37-year-old analyst is set up for a long and successful broadcast. And we could be seeing the beginning of that stardom on Sunday evening.