While Greg Olsen, an Emmy-award-winning color commentator, hasn’t been shy about his feelings toward Fox management after his demotion last year, he’s remained committed to separating his business grievances from his personal relationship with Tom Brady, who replaced him as the network’s top game analyst.
Olsen had Brady on the new episode of his podcast, “Youth Inc.” to discuss Brady’s youth sports journey and how it helped shape his competitive drive that eventually piloted seven Super Bowl victories.
When Olsen joined “Yahoo Sports Daily” with Jason Fitz and Caroline Fenton Tuesday, Fitz referenced the recent Youth Inc. episode with Brady and asked Olsen if it’s weird for him to be talking in that space with a colleague who is also a competitor in the sports broadcast industry.
“It’s really not weird at all,” Olsen said. “Tom and I have gotten to know each other over the last 12 or so months and have actually gotten to have a really nice personal relationship.
“We knew each other as players, but just on the field before and after games saying hello. But it wasn’t really until Tom joined Fox that we really got to know each other more on a personal level, and I’ve just really enjoyed being around him, spending some time with him.”
Olsen said during his “Daily” appearance that he was just at the Fox seminar in California, where he caught up with Brady. But the former tight end’s conversation with Brady on Youth Inc. was front and center for everyone to watch.
And the All-Pros addressed the elephant in the room toward the end of the episode, albeit through the youth sports lens of how you can be a good teammate.
“We’ve discussed this a lot privately. There’s been a lot of speculation about our relationship, a lot of speculation about our working relationship,” Olsen said on Youth Inc. “Something we used to try to preach with our kids all the time is, you can compete against people, but in order to prop myself up, I don’t have to pull you down.”
Olsen added: “I think, and I’m not patting ourselves on the back by any means, I’m just using it as an example where you can be highly competitive and you can be highly motivated in a very competitive world that you and I now live in and still be incredible supporters of one another and still share information and still want to see each other do well.”
Brady notably took Olsen’s place alongside Kevin Burkhardt as Fox’s No. 1 game analyst after signing a 10-year, $375 million contract with the network.
Brady’s up-and-down rookie year in the booth ended with his first Super Bowl broadcast, just two years removed from Olsen calling the first iteration of Eagles-Chiefs on Fox.
“I was very much a rookie this last year, but I looked up to a lot of people that I thought, ‘Man, he does a great job!’ And you’re obviously one of the greats already at such a young age,” Brady said to Olsen on Youth Inc.
“I watched so much Greg Olsen broadcasting tape, and I just said, ‘OK, well what’s he do that I really like that maybe I can apply to what I’m doing in my prep or on air?’ And then [do the same thing with] other people that have been in this business a long time because [I’m] trying something that’s totally new and totally different.”
While alluding to the delayed gratification he received during the first chapters of his playing career, Brady stressed the importance of getting a little bit better every day. He also conceded that he knows not everyone’s going to be a fan of his on-air work and that he’s never going to be perfect.
But, more than anything, he’s trying to be “good with the man in the mirror,” in other words proud of what he’s working toward.
“I’ll be here for you for anything,” Brady told Olsen on Youth Inc. “That’s the reality when you ask anything, from now to the rest of my life, because you’ve been available to me, and that’s what a great teammate is.”
Then Brady hinted at his and Olsen’s competing roles in the network.
“And there’s a part with our jobs that people want to write about that — I don’t give a s*** about any of that. I just care about my relationship to you,” Brady said to Olsen on Youth Inc. “I know if I’m cool with you, that’s all that matters. And I know that when you call, I answer. And I know when I call you, you answer. When I got a question, you answer it. And when you got a question, I answer it. … This time will come and go, and the articles will come and go, but the only people that need to be cool are me and you, because that’s all that matters to me in my life. So that’s how I view it.”
Olsen is itching to call big-time games again, but he’s also continuing to drive home the point that he can both push for that opportunity and support Brady in his role at Fox.
Brady, meanwhile, is clearly thankful for that support.
