With Cris Collinsworth and Jerome Bettis out, NBC added two new voices to Football Night in America.
Tony Dungy and Rodney Harrison have officially joined the cast of Football Night in America starting this season, replacing the aforementioned Collinsworth and Bettis. Collinsworth is replacing John Madden on Sunday night games, and Bettis did not have his contract renewed at the end of last season.
Dungy and Harrison will serve as the two lone analysts on a show that has three hosts — Bob Costas, Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick. Tiki Barber will be out of the studio, covering the “big games of the day and appearing many times during the course of [Football Night] from those other game sites.”
The additions of Dungy and Harrison will not be the only changes to Football Night in America. NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol says the show will now focus less on highlights and more on “[talking] football, in particular about the game that follows us,” referring to NBC’s Sunday Night Football telecast. Ebersol: “We have been too locked in on highlights for every game. We will still have highlights for every game … but there will be much more emphasis on the whys of what happened in that game than we have had in the past.”
Newcomers Dungy and Harrison are no stranger to NBC NFL coverage, as both served as guest analysts during the net’s coverage of Super Bowl XLIII.
