Want more from Front Office Sports
in your search results?
Erin Andrews and Charissa Thompson both started their sports media careers at Fox Sports, became stars at ESPN, then returned to Fox in nationally prominent roles. They cohost the Calm Down With Erin and Charissa podcast/YouTube show. Now both are scoring lucrative contract extensions with Fox before the start of the new NFL season, sources tell Front Office Sports.
Andrews and Tom Rinaldi serve as sideline reporters on Fox’s lead NFL crew. But her previous deal expired after the 2024 NFL season, making her a free agent for one of the first times in her sports media career. But Andrews and Fox have agreed to a new deal, say sources. For its part, Fox has acted like it’s business as usual. When the network announced its 2025 regular-season game schedule in May, it posted a graphic on X/Twitter showing Andrews’s face, along with Tom Brady, Kevin Burkhardt, and Rinaldi.
Thompson works for both Fox and Amazon Prime Video, hosting both Fox’s NFL Kickoff pregame show on Sundays and Prime’s Thursday Night Football pregame show. She has also re-upped with Fox. All along, she’s been emphatic in saying she wasn’t going anywhere.
“No, I’m not leaving Fox. I was never leaving Fox,” she told Andrews on their podcast in late April. “I don’t know where this took on a life of its own, where I was hosting my family at the ranch for the past weekend. Four of my family members asked, ‘Well, the place looks great. How are you going to afford it now that you don’t have a job?’ I’m not leaving Fox. I was never leaving Fox. I’m not fired.”
Thompson (who started with Fox’s HR department as a 22-year-old) joked she wants to die at the sports network’s studio lot on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. “As I always talk about, Fox is my longest relationship.”
Keeping both Andrews and Thompson is great news for Fox since they could have jumped ship for other NFL media partners. But cast changes are coming for the long-running Fox NFL Sunday pregame show, which has reigned as the No. 1 studio show for 31 years.
In early March, 81-year-old Jimmy Johnson announced he was retiring from TV. (The network hinted at the departure of the former Cowboys coach by running an AI tribute during its Super Bowl LIX coverage from New Orleans.)
During Super Bowl week, FOS asked Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long how long they’ll keep the band together. Both have been with the show since its inception in 1994. The cast also includes host Curt Menefee, Michael Strahan, Jay Glazer, and Rob Gronkowski.
As Bradshaw said to FOS: “I told my wife before I left the hotel room, I was sitting there, I said, ‘I’ve got two years left at Fox. I’m 76. It’s a young man’s game. I get that. Everybody wants their new [people]. I said, if we can get to the next Super Bowl, I’ll be 80. I think that’s time. That’s pushing it.”
The 65-year-old Long noted the cast’s loosey-goosey chemistry keeps them coming back for more: “We enjoy it every year. We talk about it all the time, actually, how much we enjoy being here. I think they pay us to fly and stay in hotels—the rest of it we’d do for free.”
Meanwhile, Laura Okmin, the third-longest-tenured sideline reporter in NFL history, told FOS she turned down a contract offer from Fox to focus on her company GALvanize, which trains young women for the sports world.
“They sent me the contract. I printed it out. I sat there. It was just my voice saying, ‘It’s time, this is it.’ I called my boss and my friend Jacob Ullman, who I’ve known for as long as I’ve been at Fox Sports. I’m happy to say he was very surprised. I would have been very disappointed if there was any other reaction. It was a really nice call, because I got to have it with my boss and my friend.”
Fox’s regular-season NFL game schedule will include a Super Bowl LIX rematch between the Eagles and Chiefs, a Thanksgiving Day NFC North clash between the Lions and Packers, and a record 11 doubleheaders, the most of any NFL TV partner ever.
A Fox spokesman declined to comment on Andrews and Thompson, saying the network does not comment on talent contracts.
