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Fox Sports might return to a three-person broadcast booth on its No. 1 NFL TV team for the first time in nearly 20 years.
The network could give announcer Kevin Burkhardt not one but two game analysts for the 2022 season, said sources.
The team will succeed Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, who bolted to ESPN. The Walt Disney Co. is paying Buck and Aikman $160 million over the next five years to call “Monday Night Football” and the Super Bowl after the 2026 season.
Back in 2002, Fox named Cris Collinsworth and Aikman as co-lead analysts alongside Buck to succeed the late John Madden and Pat Summerall. That booth lasted three seasons before Collinswoth left for NBC Sports.
The open job at Fox is one of the most high-profile in sports media. Whoever lands the position will call two of the next three Super Bowls with Burkhardt, rules analyst Mike Pereira and sideline reporters Erin Andrews and Kristina Pink.
Among the contenders are Greg Olsen, who worked with Burkhardt on the No. 2 NFL team in 2021, Super Bowl-winning coach Sean Payton and ex-Fox analyst John Lynch.
Fox would like to hand the No. 1 job to Michael Strahan of the “Fox NFL Sunday” pregame show, said sources. But Strahan is probably not interested due to his anchoring job with ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Don’t count out Jay Cutler. Fox hired Cutler as its No. 2 analyst in 2017 before he returned to the field with the Miami Dolphins.
“I would love to do it. I think it’s a fun gig. It keeps you in the game,” Cutler told FOS.
Fox could not be reached for comment.
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