There has always been a strong note of pranking to Terry Bradshaw’s work as a NFL studio analyst at Fox. Bradshaw’s role is mostly that of a Vibes Guy, the most off-kilter and least self-serious participant in a show that is mostly some guys in suits going “haw haw haw” and saying “the National Football League” during breaks in Sunday’s NFL programming, while an enormous animated football robot glowers or heaves or does The Dougie behind them. Bradshaw does that part well. Acting like a big goober has always been a big part of Bradshaw’s personal brand, dating back to the time when he was one of the NFL’s elite quarterbacks, and while it has only ever sort of been an act, there is a real performance to it as well—he never really turns that act down, at this point, but you can generally feel him deciding how much he wants to turn it up.
Except for the parts of the job which seem designed to be pranks at his expense—the ones that require speed-reading a teleprompter, saying a bunch of players’ names in rapid succession as Analysis, and participating in the sort of high-velocity, zero-calorie whip-around of highlights and hype that are the stock in trade of NFL studio shows. Energetically, Terry Bradshaw is necessary to the success of this sort of studio show, which would be louder and duller without him. But it is also true that, in a practical sense, the things that this job requires of him are all things that Bradshaw is uniquely unsuited to do. So you see the problem.
