The NFL and ESPN closed a deal that put NFL Network and other league media assets under Disney’s sports division, with the NFL taking a 10% stake in ESPN in return. On paper, it was a business restructuring. On game days, fans are feeling it as a shrinking menu.
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As the Week 2 game got underway, Christian Fauria, who is a two-time Super Bowl champion with the New England Patriots, says the crossover has left pregame coverage feeling like an ’80s sitcom, with the same cast and the same jokes on a different channel.
“It used to be you could flip off @espn, go to a different channel and get a fresh set of analyst and programming philosophy. Then they bought @nflnetwork. Now every pregame show funnels through the same corporation and its crossover hell 80s style. NFL’s version of Mork from Ork appearing on happy days.
Na-nu na-nu. (I get it, I’m old. But right) cantgetaway #cantgetawayfromit,” Fauria wrote on X.
Christian Fauria played tight end and won two Super Bowl rings with the Patriots in back-to-back years, 2003 and 2004. He has also worked in media, as a college football studio analyst for ESPN and on WEEI radio in Boston. That means he’s speaking as both a former player and someone who knows how these shows are put together.
However, Fauria feels the $3 billion NFL-ESPN merger that took place earlier this year as a downtrend. First off, the rival network factor before the merger provided an alternative feel with a different approach to the pregame show.
Per Fauria, the current setup gives an “80s sitcom vibe,” where the former NFL tight end pointed out how the old sitcoms have a habit of having a character from one show turn up on another.
To help understand better, Fauria even took Mork from Ork, the alien who first appeared on Happy Days and then got his own spin-off, Mork & Mindy, as an example.
Overall, Fauria feels that the ESPN-NFL merger has shut down the escape doors, no matter which channel a user flips to, at least for Monday Night Football, which ESPN holds exclusive broadcasting rights to.
During Christian Fauria’s playing career (1995-2007), each major network ran its own pregame show, and they were owned by different companies.
ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown was the channel’s flagship show, and Fox Sports had NFL Sunday, which was the first hour-long NFL pregame show on a broadcast network. Meanwhile, NFL Network’s Sunday morning pregame show, NFL GameDay Morning, made its debut in September 2008, after Fauria’s retirement.
However, since Fauria immediately joined CBS Sports Network as a studio analyst for College Football, he remained close to the broadcasting world. Hence, he feels the merged ESPN-NFL Network pregame show is not doing justice to what fans might expect from the networks.