Major Changes In The Fox NFL Announcing Teams

After a long and tiring day of walking around an amusement park, I was looking forward to a nice, relaxing night of watching Eagles pre-season games and having a chat or 2 over at Awful Announcing about some of the games and the few future UFL stars that we recognized. Nothing more. Nothing less. And now, another huge story about Fox's NFL coverage has been released and to say that there are changes is quite the understatement. As we all know, Brian Baldinger and Matt Vasgersian are no longer with Fox so we knew changes would be coming, but nothing quite like this. Here are the changes courtesy of Michael Hiestand's USA Today column.

Fox's lead NFL game teams — Joe Buck/Troy Aikman and Kenny Albert/Darryl Johnston — remain intact. So does its studio show, except for weather reporter Jillian Reynolds being on maternity leave.

The changes:

Billick, who worked in two- and three-man booths last season, will this season step up — after what Goren calls "an outstanding rookie season" last year — to a full-time two-man booth with Thom Brennaman.

•Charles Davis, Fox's lead analyst on BCS games, will work NFL games with Dick Stockton. With Fox's BCS deal in its last season, Goren says, "we looked for an opportunity to keep Charles with us."

•John Lynch, the nine-time Pro Bowler who called a few Fox games after retiring last season, will work games with Ron Pitts this season.

•Trent Green, who retired in June after playing 11 NFL seasons, will call games with Chris Myers. Goren says Dick Vermeil, the ex-ABC analyst who coached Green, recently "called me out of the blue and said, 'You just made the best hire of the year.' "

•Gone from Fox's NFL games: Analysts Brian Baldinger, J.C. Pearson, Tony Boselli and play-by-play announcer Matt Vasgersian.

When it comes to TV wild card Favre, Goren says there's "no indication he's interested in starting a broadcasting career at this time."

If I recall correctly, other than the studio show, Buck/Aikman and Albert/Johnston/Siragusa, the only announce team at Fox that is in tact are the 2 doofuses that are doing the Eagles-Panthers Week 1 opener, Sam Rosen and Tim Ryan.

As far as my view on the changes, while the jury is obviously still out on Lynch and Green, I'm surprised that Fox is so high on Charles "Mangina" Davis who was noticably bad in all of his BCS games. As far as Thom Brennaman goes, while I like him calling dramatic moments in dramatic games (i.e. the Boise miracles), when there is no earth-shattering excitement going on, I find him bland and unexciting, and oh, let's not forget, his man-love for Tim Tebow. In other words, when he is not screaming his head off, Thom Brennaman is a bad announcer. And wait, Chris Myers??? I suppose that he will be the first PbP man ever to call games in the booth while simultaneously giving out reports from the sidelines. In all seriousness, though, if I recall correctly, he has done PbP before and he was actually quite bad at it. And lastly, while I do feel utterly despise Dick Stockton's announcing, Fox is not helping him at all with partners. First it's Goose and Moose, then Baldinger, and now Charles Davis (and his Mangina). Oy ve. Maybe Mike Vick will draw us so much publicity and the Eagles will be so good this year that every Fox game the Eagles get Buck/Aikman. In my view, at least, they are better than most of the other garbage that Fox seems to be putting out there this year.

(Big time hat tip to SSReporters/Mookie!)