Jim Miller on NFL Broadcasting Madness | The SI Media Podcast
Jim Miller shares his insights on the wild NFL broadcasting carousel. With Troy Aikman expected to land at ESPN and Monday Night Football, Miller talks about ESPN and Fox negotiating a trade for Joe Buck. Who will take over as Fox’s lead NFL team if Buck joins Aikman at ESPN? Where will Al Michaels end up? Is Kirk Herbstreit in play to become Amazon's Thursday Night Football analyst? How do Tony Romo and Peyton Manning fit into all this?
Later in the show, Andrew Perloff from the Maggie and Perloff Show joins Jimmy to talk about Aaron Rodgers, the MLB lockout, the rumored Vince McMahon vs. Pat McAfee WrestleMania match and more.
The following transcript is an excerpt from The SI Media Podcast. Listen to the full episode on podcast players everywhere or on SI.com.
Traina: So you said to me you weren't surprised when Andrew Marchand broke that story about ESPN going after Joe Buck. You expected that to happen?
Miller: Yeah, the whole point, going back over a month ago, was ESPN wants to get Troy and Joe for the booth. So just because Troy's contract is up and they can get closer with Troy, doesn't mean Joe wasn't part of the mix and wasn't part of the conversation.
The real coolest thing is it's kind of like a chess game. Because it starts with Al of course at NBC and there's lots of dominoes. But just let's take Troy and Joe for a second. So their deals are not synced up. And so if you're ESPN and you're Jimmy Pitaro, you want both of those guys in the booth, so you can get closer with Troy and get a sense that Troy may come over. And then what happens? Well, if you're Eric Shanks, you get to sit there and you get to go, “OK, yeah, so you want them?”
But now I think what's been going on behind the scenes, and I've heard this from various people is, there's some real horse-trading. Does Fox want to keep Joe if Joe's going to be unhappy? No, but do they want to be able to monetize this in myriad ways in order to really get some flesh out of ESPN? Absolutely. And what might that mean? If I'm Fox, I might ask for two or three Big 10 games. You can be as outrageous and greedy and audacious as you can in this situation …
Look, Joe does a great job and it's like, “We don't need to get rid of him. If you guys want to have both of those guys together, then you're going to have to pay.” And it's serious bucks or it's getting into some things like, “Could you give us a couple of games?” And the question becomes then, if you're Jimmy Piaro at ESPN, how wild do you go? Because you're spending money on Troy Aikman and then you're going to have to spend money on Joe next year. But in order to make everything a big debut for the two of them this year, you're going to have to pay even extra. And there may be a point where Jimmy Pitaro says, you know what, no more. This is getting too crazy, we'll wait the year.
Traina: We’re taping this Wednesday afternoon, March 2, early afternoon. So would you say where things stand now is that ESPN is negotiating with Fox on making a deal to get Joe Buck out of that last year of his contract?
Miller: I believe that's the case.
Traina: And do you think they'll strike a deal?
Miller: Well, that's what I was just saying, which is that, if I'm Fox, I think you can feel pretty comfortable about being very aggressive about giving up a year of this prize talent.
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