It is now official — NFL Draft coverage will air on FOX for the first time, and that is not the only addition.
The NFL officially announced Wednesday that FOX will simulcast the first two nights of NFL Network’s NFL Draft coverage, becoming the first broadcast network to carry the event. That news was first reported by multiple outlets last month.
In addition, ESPN2 will air its own college-themed draft broadcast on the first night. That brings the number of networks carrying the first two rounds to four — not counting ESPN Deportes or streaming options. The college-themed coverage will be preceded by a two-hour College Gameday on ESPN.
The tonnage does not end there. ABC will simulcast ESPN’s Draft coverage on the final day of the event. As Sports Business Journal reported last week, ABC’s involvement was a concession made then-ESPN interim president George Bodenheimer to try and smooth the network’s increasingly fraught relationship with the league.
All told, the NFL Draft will air across five different networks this year. If the lesson of the past two years is that there is too much NFL on television, the league has ground its feet into that message like Rick James into Eddie Murphy‘s couch.
As for the most newsworthy addition, FOX, the network’s lead pro and college football analysts — Troy Aikman and Joel Klatt respectively — will appear on the NFL Network telecast. So too will Charles Davis and Peter Schrager, though those two already regularly appear on NFL Network.
[News from NFL Communications 3.21]
