Much like the rest of sports media connoisseurs, Erin Andrews saw the reports speculating about her future at Fox Sports, too.
Andrews, the network’s NFL sideline staple, “quietly” re-signed with Fox on a three-year deal, quipping on a recent episode of the SI Media Podcast that she hopes to cool it with the headlines “for a while.”
“I figured enough was enough with the headlines for a while,” Andrews said. “My deal was up in August. Fox came to me pretty much right away and just said, ‘We wanna keep you here.’ At that point, I was unaware of who I was gonna be doing the games with.”
Andrews signed a new contract with Fox after her longtime colleagues, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, left the network for ESPN this offseason. The Post’s Andrew Marchand first reported in February that Aikman was expected to leave Fox Sports to become the main analyst for ESPN’s “Monday Night Football.”
Andrews, who made a similar move herself in June 2012, leaping from ESPN to Fox, will now work games with Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen. She will eventually work with Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady, whenever the seven-time Super Bowl champ decides to hang up his cleats for a second time.
Brady, who will soon report to training camp in Tampa, will transition to the broadcast booth as Fox Sports’ lead NFL analyst when he decides to officially retire. He agreed to a monster 10-year, $375 million deal with Fox in May, as first reported by The Post.
Andrews said she was in Montana when she first learned that Aikman leaving the network.
“It was winter break. We were just done with the Super Bowl, done with everything. … I’m standing here, and my phone rang. And I just looked at [my husband] Jarret [Stoll] and I said, ‘This isn’t good.’ I’d said Troy’s going to Amazon, and he’s calling to tell me, so I put it on speaker,” Andrews said.
“We just started b.s.-ing, and I told him I was on my way to go work out and we were in Montana, we were going to go skiing later, blah, blah, blah,” she continued. “And he just got right into it and he’s like, ‘Hey, I’m going to ESPN.’ I just looked at Jarret and I didn’t speak for five minutes. I tried to talk, but I started to cry. I just couldn’t believe that was happening. I think all of us on our crew thought it was Amazon. I was just like, ‘Wait a second. What?’ My next reaction was, ‘Who are you doing the games with?’ I was just trying to put it all together.”
Andrews, who admittedly drank “a lot” of tequila after her call with Aikman, also reached out to Brady the night she found out the Hall of Famer was leaving Fox.
“I’m not gonna lie, I went out that night in Montana, and my husband and I went to our favorite bar and I consumed a lot of tequila,” Andrews said. “I then apologized to my husband because this was supposed to be the vacation we didn’t talk on our phones, but everybody’s just calling each other from our crew, we’re calling our bosses at Fox, we’re just like, What the heck? At this point Tom was retired, I may or may not have put a text out there or a DM or whatever and just said, ‘Hey, what are you doing next year? You wanna be part of our crew?’ I just told him how fun it was and how great our crew was. I placed a call to one of my bosses at Fox and said, ‘Full disclosure, I’ve had a lot of tequila. Why not try to hit it out of the park here with Tom?'”
Andrews, who also praised how “great” the network handled her contract situation, could hardly contain her excitement in May when she learned about her now-future colleague — while on the Peloton bike, of all places.
