33 Facts About Fox NFL

1.

NFL on Fox is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League games produced by Fox Sports and televised on the Fox broadcast network.

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2.

Coverage formally began the following month on September 4, with the premiere of Fox NFL Sunday, followed by a slate of six regionally televised regular season games on the first Sunday of the 1994 season.

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3.

Fox NFL management, having seen the critical role that soccer programming had played in the growth of British satellite service BSkyB, believed that sports, and specifically professional football, would be the engine that would turn Fox NFL into a major network the quickest.

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4.

Fox made an offer to the NFL to acquire the Monday Night Football contract for the same amount ABC that had been paying to carry the package, about US$1.

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5.

However, the NFL, in part because Fox had not established itself as a major network, chose to renew its contract with ABC.

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6.

Meanwhile, after the Fox NFL Broadcasting Company was launched, David Dixon, founder of the United States Football League, proposed the creation of the "American Football Federation", a spring league that would be made up of ten teams and draft high school graduates who were declared academically ineligible to play College Football by the NCAA.

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7.

Indeed, Fox NFL was still an upstart player in 1993, not yet considered on par with CBS, NBC and ABC, the three longer established major networks.

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8.

However, Fox NFL did not have a sports division up to that point, and its news division was a few years away from fruition, and most Fox NFL affiliates were often either full-power UHF stations or low-powered stations.

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9.

Fox NFL was able to procure Pat Summerall and Madden to be its lead broadcast team, a capacity they had been serving for CBS.

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10.

Terry Bradshaw, who was previously co-host of The Fox NFL Today, was added to serve as the pregame show's lead analyst.

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11.

Fox NFL hired a set of the next generation of young, up-and-coming play-by-play announcers for its lower-level broadcast crews: 26-year-old Kenny Albert, son of legendary sports announcer Marv Albert; 30-year-old Thom Brennaman, son of longtime Cincinnati Reds announcer Marty Brennaman; 25-year-old Joe Buck, son of legendary sports announcer Jack Buck; and 34-year-old Kevin Harlan, son of Green Bay Packers executive Bob Harlan.

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12.

Fox sought to raise its station profile as the start of its NFL contract came closer by approaching other broadcasters about switching their VHF stations to the network from one of the other established networks.

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13.

CBS had hoped to replace the NFL with National Hockey League rights, but Fox then promptly outbid CBS for those as well; in addition, Fox took over the rights to Major League Baseball in 1996, after the cancellation of The Baseball Network, which was a joint venture between NBC and ABC at the time and had replaced CBS two years prior.

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14.

The network's pre-game show, Fox NFL Sunday focused more on entertainment and less on in-depth discussion of game strategy.

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15.

Fox's NFL coverage introduced bolder and innovative graphics, for instance, the FoxBox, a continuous on-screen time-and-score graphic that Hill had originally used on Sky Sports's coverage of the Premier League.

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16.

Fox NFL's broadcast was the first Super Bowl to have a constant, live-updating graphic for the score, time and down, and distance.

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17.

Fox NFL was joined by Donovan McNabb and Charissa Thompson.

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18.

Rain postponed the Game 2 of the NLDS to Sunday and Fox NFL kept Albert on baseball coverage, with Sam Rosen taking his place alongside Daryl Johnston.

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19.

Weeks before the 2020 season, Fox NFL dropped Thom Brennaman following the controversy surrounding his use of a homophobic slur while working as the television voice of the Cincinnati Reds.

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20.

The program, in addition to providing analysis of the day's Fox NFL games, sends viewers to the remaining ongoing regional games after their main game ends until the end of the last game.

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21.

Fox NFL presented a limited Monday night game between the New York Giants and Minnesota Vikings on December 13,2010.

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22.

On January 31,2018, the NFL announced that Fox had acquired the broadcast television rights to the Thursday Night Football package from 2018 through 2022.

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23.

Fox NFL will maintain its NFC package of Sunday afternoon games but will no longer broadcast Thursday Night Football.

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24.

Fox NFL will have exclusive rights to Christmas Day games, when the schedule allows.

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25.

In December 2010, Fox NFL experimented with using an in-game soundtrack during a regional game between the Arizona Cardinals and Carolina Panthers.

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26.

The NFL on Fox logo was repositioned to the far left instead of the far right.

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27.

Fox's NFL telecasts were the only major telecasts of the league's games to not feature timeout indicators until the 2010 season, save for the number of timeouts that each team has on the right side of the banner.

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28.

Also for the 2012 season, Fox NFL began providing play-by-play commentary of all games in Spanish on its second audio program channel.

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29.

The layout of the score box is essentially a mirror image of the already-introduced MLB graphic, except that the Fox NFL version is on the top-left of the screen, while the baseball version was originally on the bottom-left.

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30.

Fox NFL gradually worked elements of a new square-edged graphics package with thinner fonts into secondary situations during the 2016 season.

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31.

Fox NFL Sunday had been the ratings leader among network pregame coverage from its debut in 1994.

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32.

However, in 2006, Fox NFL Sunday was overtaken in the ratings by CBS' The Fox NFL Today.

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33.

Spokesperson for Fox Sports said that Goldberg "was quick to apologize for this unfortunate and regrettable situation and understands he made a mistake" and would not call any NFL games for the network for the remainder of the 2014 season, as he was scheduled to conduct only those two games.

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