Bucking the trend
Fox Sports has called a press conference for Monday in New York, where they're finally going to announce who'll replace James Brown as the host of the "NFL on Fox" Sunday morning pregame show.
Why blow the news now and ruin the surprise?
With all the "Who's The Host?" network promos littering every Fox sports show for the last few weeks -- our favorite response, from Terry Bradshaw, is, of course, "Who needs a host?" -- the real coup would have been to wait until the very first show to unveil what's going to be announced Monday.
And that's going to be some kind of hybred thing where A-game play-by-play man Joe Buck will play host, then leave the set to call the game.
From what we've heard, the tryouts given to Jeanne Zelasko, Chris Myers, Chris Rose, et. al., were less than impressive. Buck was Plan B, and now it appears that he'll be the one asked to referee the non-essential banter between Bradshaw, Howie Long , Jimmy Johnson and the Weather Boob, plus introduce the only redeeming thing -- Frank Caliendo -- for the hour before the kickoff.
For Fox, the spin will be that this is another innovative way to do things. The reality: They have no choice.