Legendary NFL producer didn't want SNF job

For a person who produces live sports, producing the NFL would likely be the pinnacle of one’s career. And producing NBC’s Sunday Night Football package is arguably the pinnacle of the pinnacle.

But that didn’t mean longtime Sunday Night Football producer Fred Gaudelli wanted to take the job when it was originally offered to him. Appearing on the Everybody Loves Sports Media podcast with The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, Gaudelli revealed he initially wanted to continue producing baseball rather than taking the SNF gig.

My initial response was, ‘No, I don’t want to do that. I’d rather do baseball.’ And they’re like, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Well, I love baseball. Baseball is my favorite sport.’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, but we really need you to do football.’

And I was like, ‘Yeah, I really want to stay on baseball.’ And this is going back and forth, and finally Steve Anderson says, ‘Fred, listen. If you want to stay on baseball, we wish you the best of luck. You can go find a baseball job. But if you want to produce NFL football, this is the place for you.’ And at that point, thankfully, I acquiesced to what they were asking me to do.

Gaudelli now serves as the executive producer for Amazon’s Thursday Night Football package but headed 16 seasons of NBC’s premier NFL package. He’s the 2023 recipient of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award, the first producer to receive the honor, and has 24 Emmy Awards to boot.

Suffice it to say, Gaudelli is one of the greatest to ever do it. That makes it even more fascinating that he nearly took his career down an entirely different path. Luckily for the football-watching community, he did not. And with his fingerprints now on two separate primetime NFL packages, viewers are certainly better off for his decision.

[ Everybody Loves Sports Media ]

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