Change May Send Fox On The Run

It won’t be announcerless, but almost.

On Dec. 9, Fox will use studio analysts Terry Bradshaw and Jimmy Johnson - without a play-by-play announcer - to make the call on its national game, Arizona at San Diego.

Fox Sports president David Hill calls it an experiment “and not a direction Fox Sports plans to move.” Bradshaw calls it a space shot.

“But we were guinea pigs when we came over to Fox. That’s what’s exciting about it,” Bradshaw said. “We’re like astronauts.”

Hopefully, not riding Apollo 13.

“Oh, we’ll land,” Bradshaw said. “We just might have an engine out. It’s exciting and scary.”

Bradshaw, who came over from CBS last season when Fox took over the NFC package, last worked a game in the 1993 preseason when he and Greg Gumbel went to England. Bradshaw moved out of the booth and into the studio for CBS in 1990.

Johnson, the former Dallas coach, has never worked a game from the broadcast booth, on the other hand.

“We’ve rehearsed, and he’s so good,” Bradshaw said. “You know, if I let him go. … It’s like Jimmy could do the game, and I’ll just sit back and ask questions.”

Bradshaw said he first learned of the idea for the two-analyst game about three months ago. The plan is to have Bradshaw and Johnson discussing the game as they would if they were fans, albeit extremely knowledgeable ones.

Much of the duties of the play-by-play man, such as calling downs and yardage, will be handled by on-screen graphics.

“I expect Terry and Jimmy to be more conversational and less structured than a typical broadcast team,” Hill said.

That could be an understatement, considering the free-wheeling, occasionally slapstick style of Bradshaw, especially.

“It could be a disaster,” Bradshaw said. “But it should be interesting.

“One of the biggest complaints I’ve always had, and everybody always has, about announcers is that they talk too much,” Bradshaw said. “Jimmy and I could talk for 3 hours, and I know how it grates on people. We are really setting ourselves up.”

Bradshaw said his biggest fear actually is that people won’t understand what they’re doing or why they’re doing it. It does represent perhaps the biggest departure from normal broadcast style since NBC did an announcerless game in 1980.

“From that standpoint, that unnerves me a little bit,” Bradshaw said.

There’s also this to consider - replacing Bradshaw alongside James Brown and Howie Long in the studio for the pregame show will be Jerry Glanville.

“I never thought of that,” Bradshaw said. “That’s pretty scary, too.”

No showdown here

Sunday’s National Football League 1 p.m. showdown between Kansas City and Oakland will be blacked out in the Spokane area, much to the chagrin of KHQ-TV station manager Lon Lee.

KHQ, Spokane’s NBC affiliate, is being forced to show the Houston at Pittsburgh game at 10 a.m.

NBC, according to Lee, wants to avoid a conflict with the Seattle Seahawks-Philadelphia Eagles game, which will be televised on Fox at 1 p.m.

“We, along with a number of stations in the Northwest, requested the Kansas City-Oakland game,” Lee said. “Football fans are getting the lesser end of the deal.”

, DataTimes