Celebrating 30 Years of FOX NFL Sunday

The Backstory…

Other than ESPN’s offering, it was standard procedure for a network pregame show to only be a half-hour in length on a Sunday afternoon. Then, late in 1993, sports television was changed forever.

FOX Broadcasting, known for offbeat scripted television like The Simpsons, In Living Color, and Married… With Children, outbid CBS for a four-year contract to air NFC games beginning in 1994. The network initially attempted to get on the football field as far back as the strike-shortened 1987 season.

ABC’s contract to carry Monday Night Football was up following 1986 and the network was less than enthused about renewing the rights. Even though FOX placed a bid on the package, the network’s overall low clearance rate meant ABC would keep MNF.

The Dawn of a New Era

September 4, 1994: Seven and a half months removed from a tearful goodbye from Greg Gumbel on The NFL Today, a new chapter in broadcasting would begin to unfold.

“This is a FOX Sports presentation…”

FOX NFL Sunday Different From Contemporaries at the Jump

With those words, spoken by late voiceover artist Dick Ervasti, FOX Sports was launched. Atypical of other pregame offerings at the time, FOX NFL Sunday would regularly begin its telecasts with a comedic sketch before its opening montage.

On that first day, the opening sketch featured analyst Terry Bradshaw riding a horse to Los Angeles as he charted out “new frontier”, eventually arriving at the FOX Television Center for the program.

“THIS is it,” Ervasti intoned. “Today, the curtain opens on a new era! Football at its best, coverage at its finest, The NFL on FOX!”

Bradshaw offered up a tour of the set to the home viewers watching, which he’d do again in 2003 when the studio was redesigned for the 10th anniversary of the program.  Also atypical was the fact that FOX’s pregame was one hour in length every week, forcing NBC to expand its show to an hour on a permanent basis in 1996.

Constant Score Bug Becomes a Constant on FOX

Prior to 1994, in order to keep abreast of the score of a ballgame, you’d need to wait around for a few minutes to see it displayed for about 10 seconds on a lower-third at the bottom of the screen. If you missed that, heaven forbid, you needed to ask your friend occupying the other couch cushion.

While ESPN’s coverage of the 1994 FIFA World Cup was the first to offer a dedicated score bug at the top of the screen, FOX was the first over-the-air network to make that feature permanent to its telecasts, effective with the first NFL preseason games to air in August of that year.

Analyst John Madden explained the bug in a way only he could on the first telecast.

“One thing, always having this in here, I think helps,” Madden said. “When you’ve always got this, you always know how much time there is and what the score is, so if you ever walk out of any place, you come back and you always ask ‘How much time is there to go?’ Like, if someone’s cooking dinner or something, you can look up there, seconds, 12 seconds, score, 10-3. You always know it.”

Ladies and gentlemen, say what you will about the late John Madden, but that is some hard-hitting analysis. Really insightful stuff.

Pat and John Were a Constant, Too

When the 1993 NFL season ended, there was some question as to whether or not a great broadcasting duo would remain as such. For those old enough to remember watching them, there wasn’t an announce team better than Pat Summerall and John Madden.

“I’m not going to tell you I love you, but I like you a lot, an awful lot,” Summerall said in the final sign-off at CBS in January of 1994. Upon FOX securing the rights, Pat and John, along with Terry Bradshaw, moved to the fourth network.

Summerall and Madden took a pay cut in order to remain a duo at FOX, proving you can’t put a price on friendship. For the first nine years of FOX NFL Sunday, they served as the top broadcast team, ending their run together at Super Bowl XXVII.

FOX NFL Theme Music an Earworm

What would The NFL on FOX be without its theme music? In the 30 years since FOX NFL Sunday began, that tune has become almost iconic as the broadcasts themselves.

Personally, it’s been living rent-free in this writer’s head since age five. When composer Scott Schreer of NJJ (Not Just Jingles) Productions was tasked with putting together the piece, he received a piece of advice from George Greenberg of ABC by FOX Sports executive producer David Hill.

“Give me a superhero,” Hill said. “Give me Batman plays football.”

Little did anyone know that Schreer and the musicians recording the track would make a masterpiece that’s synonymous with not only the NFL but also FOX Sports as a whole. The current music package used on CBS for the last 20 years was commissioned by chairman Sean McManus to rival FOX’s music beds.

Injury Timeout Cut Proves Strangely Popular

In recent years, there’s been a subset of the NFL fandom which has taken a liking to the version of the FOX NFL Sunday music that plays to punctuate injury timeouts.  This isn’t strictly used on NFL telecasts. FOX College Football uses the cut during an injury timeout, as well.

It’s also not strictly used for an injury timeout. At the end of the network’s Super Bowl XXXI postgame show, the cut played over a still of the late NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, as that was the first Super Bowl held after his death.

Final Thoughts

Love them or hate them, FOX Sports has become a power player in the landscape over the past three decades. It started with the NFL.

Here’s to 30 more years of FOX NFL Sunday.