With football season roughly a month away, one of the networks that carries the Sunday afternoon games will be pulling the sheet of its lineup of game announcers and analysts.
According to Michael Hiestand of USA Today (via SportsBusiness Daily), FOX will announce the following pairings for its football hierarchy: (1) Joe Buck and Troy Aikman; (2) Kenny Albert, Daryl Johnston, and Tony Siragusa; (3) Thom Brennaman and Brian Billick; (4) Dick Stockton and John Lynch; (5) Chris Myers and Tim Ryan; (6) Ron Pitts and Jim Mora; and (7) Sam Rosen and Chad Pennington. Newcomer Gus Johnson and Charles Davis will periodically supplement their college football duties with a pro game.
Mora moves from part-time t0 full-time. Moving from part-time to full-time at NFLN (and as a result part-time to no-time at FOX) is former NFL quarterback Kurt Warner. NFL Network announced today that Warner will join the league-owned operation exclusively in 2011, appearing on NFL GameDay Morning and the pregame, halftime, and postgame coverage of NFLN’s Thursday Night Football.
We’re told that Warner will be added but no one will be subtracted, with a six-person crew of on-air talent handling NFL GameDay Morning. (Last year, Warner worked Thursday nights from the studio, so there likely won’t be any subtractions there, either.)
Warner was one of several FOX/NFLN double-duty employees. It’ll be interesting to see whether his full-time move to NFLN is the first example of a potential tug-o-war, with both networks hoping to get their talent to go “all in” with one network or the other.