Greg Olsen is living a great life. He had a fantastic NFL career as one of the league’s best tight ends. He then parlayed that into a sports media career where he quickly established himself as a very good game analyst. Then, as luck would have it when Joe Buck and Troy Aikman left for ESPN, he and partner Kevin Burkhardt were promoted to the top spot at the network and they got to call the Super Bowl. And most importantly, they did a really good job at it with well over 100 million people watching them.
Of course, the flip side of that is Greg Olsen is about to be replaced at his job.
The weirdest thing about Olsen’s experience these days must be everyone applauding him for the great job he does while asking about the 100,000 pound elephant in the room that Tom Brady has been looming over his shoulder for almost an entire year now with his name on Olsen’s seat. How could it not? He’s asked about it all the time.
To Olsen’s credit, he used it in a very clever social media ad for Fireball Whisky.
While most of the commercial focuses on how fans can enjoy a shot of whisky to let out their frustration with poor officiating, there’s one line at the end that’s just for Olsen.
“Potentially losing your job that… you’ve been pretty good at? Fireball,” Olsen said. The ad then ends with Olsen saying, “man I thought I was doing a good job.”
Good for Olsen to be able to joke about the situation (and get paid for it), but you just have to wonder how awkward this all is for Fox Sports. Hopefully there’s some way the network can make it work for both Brady and Olsen. Three man booth? Brady calls the odd quarters and Olsen calls the even quarters? Fireball drinking contest to see who calls the game each week?
[The Spun]