Mike Greenberg will embark on a new NFL journey this season.
Adding to the many hats he wears for the Worldwide Leader, Greenberg will host Sunday NFL Countdown , replacing Samantha Ponder. ESPN fired Ponder and Robert Griffin III at the end of last month due to budgetary reasons.
Appearing on Sports Business Journal’s The Sports Media Podcast , Greenberg discussed his approach to the new role and how it differs from his previous experience hosting NBA Countdown.
“Here’s what I said to my wife; I said, ‘I cannot, at any point, allow myself to look at this as all these things I have to do. I must look at this at all these things I get to do,’ that someday I was going to sit in the chairs that Chris Berman made iconic, I mean, legendary on the NFL Draft and now on the Sunday pregame show,” Greenberg said. “I would’ve wept; that’s not hyperbole. I literally would’ve wept.
“So, no one is forcing me to do all these things — these are voluntary. Burke Magnus didn’t come to me and say, ‘Mike, you’re doing Countdown whether you want or not.’ He asked me if I wanted him, and I told him I had a two-word response, ‘I’m honored, and I’m thrilled. And I’ve told everyone I work with that if it gets to be too much for me, I will let you.”
That is to say, when Greenberg did the NBA, it got to be too much for him.
“I really believe this will be different,” he says, “because the NBA, those were games that got played at night. It was two nights a week, sometimes three nights a week, and I’d be getting out of the building at like 11:30 or midnight. That is vastly different from one show a week that we do in the morning. So, my sleep pattern is not all messed up or anything like that. I’m very confident that I’ll be able to handle this.
“And the way I approach it is, if I weren’t doing all these things, I would kill to trade places with me. These are jobs you don’t turn down if they’re offered to you. These are not problems. No one should feel sorry for me or worry about me. If it gets to be too much, I’ll let them know. And if I have to take a day off from Get Up here or there just to get a little mental reset, then I will.
“But I’m really hopeful that I’m not gonna have any such problems and I really don’t expect to.”
Malika Andrews replaced Greenberg as the host of ESPN’s NBA Countdown leading into the 2023-24 NBA season. Greenberg joined Countdown in 2021 to help stabilize the show after the tumultuous situation between Rachel Nichols and Maria Taylor. In July 2021, private comments from Nichols discussing Taylor and ESPN’s diversity history were leaked , leading to their respective departures from the network.
Greeny himself departed NBA Countdown in what was described as a mutual decision, as he maintained no shortage of jobs at the time and still does. And mentioning that it became too much for him, SBJ’s Austin Karp asked about what might be the biggest thing he’s going to bring as his turn there to be the host of Sunday NFL Countdown .
“That’s a good question,” replied Greenberg. “They couldn’t be more different shows. NBA Countdown , I think anybody involved in that show will say that the hardest part, the most frustrating part of it, is it was just so short. There’s just so little room. So, when you factor in commercials and everything else, we had like 22 minutes. It’s just hard to be spectacular. And I think we did a great job of it, and I think Malika has taken that baton and run like the wind with it; she’s phenomenal. And I think that show is terrific.
“This show is three hours long, so the least of my concerns is that there’s going to be any things left unsaid, any points left unmade, that I’m gonna have to cut people off before they can get all the things that they want to say. I feel great about that, so, in that regard, they’re very different. The other thing I would say that makes them different is the difference in the tone and the tenor of the NBA conversation, in general, versus the NFL conversation. The NBA conversation is much more big-picture-oriented. Generally speaking, during the regular season, the audience tunes in to hear Stephen A. Smith, Michael Wilbon, and, at the time I was doing it, Jalen Rose talking about the issues around the league.
“We did not sit there and do a pregame show. On a Friday night before the games in February, we weren’t sitting there getting you set for the Bucks and the Heat tonight. Most nights, we were talking about the biggest stories in the league. And the NFL on a Sunday morning, I think, we think, that the audience wants us to be getting them ready for the games. We will talk about the biggest stories in the sport; we’ll talk about whatever the big issues are. There’s no question there’s room for that in the three-hour presentation. But the most important thing we need to do is get football fans ready to watch their team, ready for their last-minute fantasy decisions, and increasingly ready for any last-minute wagering decisions they’re about to make — that is an increasingly significant part of the equation.
“And I believe strongly that’s what the audience wants and what everybody I work with now with and for has told me what the audience wants. I think those are the ways that the shows are different. The ways that they’re the same is that when I was working with Stephen A., Michael and Jalen, I had an unbelievable team, and my job was to be a pass-first point guard, which is to say, if you leave me wide open in the corner, I’ll knock down a 3-pointer every now and then. If there’s an opinion just sitting to be taken, I’m more than happy to get it.
“But I believe that my strength on that show, on the NBA show, and on the Get Up show every day, and what I’m hoping to bring to the NFL show, is I want Rex (Ryan) to be the best version of Rex he can possibly be. And the same for Tedy (Bruschi), and the same for Randy (Moss), and the same for Alex Smith and the same with (Adam Schefter) and the same for all of our reporters in the field, who are an incredibly important part of our presentation.
“My mother isn’t tuning in on a Sunday morning because I’m hosting. These people are tuning in because the football games are starting soon, and that’s freaking important in the world of sports today. And it is my job to present that to the audience in a way that’s as easily digestible and easy to take and fun and informative as I can. And if I do that, then I’m doing my job. And if the audience comes away saying, ‘That was a really good show,’ I’ve done my job…”
[ SBJ ]
The post Mike Greenberg explains why NFL hosting job is different from short NBA stint appeared first on Awful Announcing .
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