Tom Brady’s cheerful first broadcast outing as Raiders owner is good news for NFL, not so much for Fox, fans

The bar for NFL team owners speaking in public hovers right around floor level. Long as you don’t say anything jaw-droppingly stupid, ignorant or offensive, everybody’s still going to call you “Mr.” and jockey for your affection.

So by the standards of his new colleagues, newly minted Las Vegas Raiders owner Tom Brady did just fine in his first announcing gig since getting the approval to buy into the league’s highest echelon. By the standards of the announcing profession and the expectation of Fox viewers, however, well … Brady has a lot of work to do to convincingly juggle these two roles.

Brady officially became a minority owner of the Raiders earlier this week, a role that comes with significant implications for his Sunday job announcing marquee games for Fox. Among the restrictions on Brady as an owner: He can’t criticize the referees, he can’t criticize other organizations, and he can’t sit in on pregame production meetings with other organizations.

All of these restrictions make a lot of sense for, say, Jerry Jones or Robert Kraft. But for a guy getting paid $375 million over the next 10 years to broadcast some of the most important games of the season — including the Super Bowl — these restrictions sure seem like they’ll prevent Brady from being as honest as he ought to be, and as fans should expect he’ll be.

This kind of ownership/broadcast crossover isn’t unprecedented in sports; over in NASCAR, for instance, team owners have often served as broadcasters for races, with little to no acknowledgement of their relationship on the air. But NASCAR is a chummier sport than the NFL … and, like every other sport, has a much smaller broadcast reach than the NFL.

Tom Brady will need to be careful how close he gets to Brock Purdy and other players. (Michael Owens/Getty Images)

A broadcaster doesn’t have to burn everything to the ground; that kind of Skip Bayless/Stephen A. Smith flamethrowing is less analysis and more performance, and…

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-10-21 00:00:08

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