Welcome to the sports media’s special contributor era

One by one in the 1990s and 2000s, a hallowed generation of NFL signal-callers washed out in the media. Joe Montana lasted a season. John Elway said no. Dan Marino had a forgetful decade in the studio at CBS. Only Troy Aikman lasted as a top commentator.

With so little to show from that crop, networks circled around their next target, and in the years after Peyton Manning retired from the NFL in 2015, he became the whale of all whales. Rival commentators’ salaries and networks’ broadcast schedules shifted under his weight.

The problem, left mostly unaddressed in the speculation about where he would work, was that Manning did not actually seem to want to do the job. He preferred to stay in Denver near family and where his other business interests reside. Each spring, Manning would briefly entertain offers before leaving his suitors at the altar.

Manning never actually signed on to call games. Instead, he and his company, Omaha Productions, got into business with ESPN on a documentary project and then the ManningCast, a side broadcast on Monday nights. The Hall of Famer got the best of both worlds: breaking games down with his brother while never leaving the house. And fans still got insights from perhaps the most brilliant signal-caller in league history, just packaged in a different form.

In the process, Manning gave rise to what we now ought to call sports media’s Special Contributor Era. With his own money, his own connections, and his own brand, Manning had leverage over the networks chasing after him. It would be a stretch to say he didn’t need ESPN at all; the ManningCast doesn’t exist without the network’s NFL broadcast rights and production capacity. But Manning was the draw, not ESPN or Fox. Rather than agree to the rigors of a regular slate of broadcasting assignments, Manning created a job that he could say yes to.

The trend has now made its way to nearly every network, far beyond altcasts and side shows. The special contributor is often the big draw of a network’s coverage in 2026, but also its most elusive star.

If Manning birthed the Special Contributor Era, Michael Jordan gave it its name. Eager to punctuate the return of NBA on NBC coverage at its Upfronts last year, NBC Sports agreed to a deal with His Airness that was heavy on hype and light on details. “The NBA on NBC was a meaningful part of my career, and I’m excited about being a special contributor to the project,” Jordan said in the press release. When Opening Night came around, there was Jordan at halftime opening up on how he finds competition in retirement. The few minutes we got of Jordan in conversation with Mike Tirico were the perfect tease for what we then still hoped might be a season of commentary from the GOAT.

That single taping proved to be the extent of Jordan’s contributions, a fact that NBC impressively hid by cutting the conversation into small segments that lasted through more than half the season.

Nobody else has pushed the boundaries of the special contributor role quite that far, but plenty are comfortable in this lane.

Dwyane Wade was one of the big splashes of Prime Video’s NBA broadcasting roster after a strong showing at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Wade didn’t appear on-air until just before Christmas, when he called an NBA Cup game. Since then, Prime Video’s PR account has promoted just two studio appearances from Wade. In an announcement for the streamer’s NBA postseason coverage, the lone reference to Wade said he would “return to the rotation” of game analysts for the playoffs.

Caitlin Clark joined Sunday Night Basketball twice this season, where her charisma translated well to television. Clark showcased a clear knowledge of the men’s game while also allowing rare insights into her own competitive mindset and career. But while she gave NBC its money’s worth with big viral moments and easily felt like the most famous person on the network’s starry roster of on-air talent, Clark is an active WNBA player. Those hits are going to be few and far between.

Even the greatest sports moments often give way to a reminder that our time with top commentators is fleeting. There may not be a more recognizable collection of sports broadcasting stars than on Fox’s MLB studio show. The desk of Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, and David Ortiz helped the World Series and World Baseball Classic level up, but Fox Sports’ announcement last month offered a reminder that we only see these guys for “marquee events.”

Manning also helped shepherd in perhaps the most notorious example of the Special Contributor Era two years ago at ESPN. Out of a job and looking to embellish his image around the NFL, Bill Belichick put together the most prolific year of football content we’ve ever seen. Belichick co-hosted multiple podcasts, launched a film breakdown YouTube show, and was a weekly guest on The Pat McAfee Show as well as the ManningCast. The experiment, while informative, was clearly intended to help Belichick get his next job.

It is no coincidence that the Special Contributor Era has also overlapped with — or perhaps led to — this frustrating period of commentators working for teams, an issue bigger than Tom Brady owning the Raiders or Troy Aikman gathering intel for the Dolphins. Across sports, Kershaw, Grant Hill, Sue Bird, Udonis Haslem, Steve Nash, Bruce Pearl, Nick Saban, and others comfortably occupy decision-making jobs for the teams or leagues they cover. When you have the leverage over your employer and cover sports on your own terms rather than theirs, you set the ethical parameters of your own career.

The appeal to these celebrity analysts is easy to understand. They clearly want to keep ties to the leagues they played in and the fans who made them stars, but in a capacity that allows them to cash in elsewhere and control their time.

Special guests and part-timers are not new in sports media, nor are coaches and executives doing pit stops on television or radio. The change has come in how much of a network’s coverage is being built around these special contributors. A generation ago, the media’s free agency of stars like Reggie Miller, Charles Barkley, or Jimmy Johnson was big news. They were picking the place where we would tune in to watch them once or twice a week for decades to come.

Announcers don’t move the needle on viewership or the day-to-day attention paid to a league. But their commitment and their passion come through. These are the people we spend time with on a daily basis, who help us put the thrill of fandom into perspective. They don’t just talk over or between games. They add value to the experience of loving a sport, and enrich our relationships with the teams and leagues we care about.

For the class of athletes that includes Manning and many others mentioned here, only a motherlode like what Fox offered Brady can truly make it worth it to commit to broadcasting full-time, year-round. This framing, though, sends a signal that even among the greats who want to keep sharing their love of their sport with us, the arrangement has to work for them. So we get crumbs of Jordan’s “insights into excellence” and only enough wisdom from Belichick to get some viral clips in front of his next bosses.

Plenty of big stars still come about sports TV jobs the old-fashioned way. Brady is maybe the most famous person ever to call NFL games, and Travis Kelce is already in line. Carmelo Anthony is on-site every Sunday for big NBA games on NBC. Saban rejuvenated College GameDay in his 70s. Passion and the allure of a big platform still do it for some people.

For others, the industry will have to evolve. Fox and Brady clearly have a business partnership that goes beyond Sundays in the broadcast booth, as do ESPN and Manning. Some of the onus certainly has to be placed on networks and production companies to think creatively about how to woo the big stars and get them to say yes to giving back to and growing the game from behind the mic. The greats do have a role to play in driving a league’s popularity in the big picture.

One is Clayton Kershaw, the future Hall of Fame pitcher who, coming off his third World Series championship and heading into retirement, surprised many by joining NBC as an MLB commentator. On Opening Day in Los Angeles, Kershaw delivered fantastic insight on the reigning back-to-back champion Dodgers and dazzled within NBC’s new “Inside the Pitch” segment.

Signing Kershaw was one of the biggest coups in MLB media in a long time. The game is resurgent, but most of its broadcasters are still fairly small-time across the top networks. In Kershaw, NBC nabbed someone whose name every baseball fan knows and who, fresh off his playing career, understands the modern game as well.

A day after trending across social media for his incredible debut on NBC, in a separate story on his front office role with the Dodgers, the timeline for Kershaw’s next assignment came out. We won’t be seeing him again until August.