If you were looking to assign a writer to make the case for Fox NFL broadcaster Tom Brady as the 2025 Sports Media Person of the Year, one of the last people who should be assigned the piece would be a pundit who predicted that Brady would leave the broadcasting booth after his first season.
The above words were written by this idiot pundit. But I now return, intellectually bloodied but not defeated, to make a different case:
Brady is my 2025 sports media person of the year.
Yes, Brady is the last person on earth who needs another honor — even one that comes with no cash value — but think about his 2025:
His year began with Super Bowl LIX — just his 22nd telecast as a Fox broadcaster — which earned him membership on the exclusive list of broadcasters to serve as the lead analyst of the Super Bowl for the network airing it. (There are fewer than 30 in the club.)
In football vernacular, his Super Bowl call was a “game manager” performance. Nothing spectacular; he covered what he needed to cover. But here is what was also important: His call did not produce any significant blowback or social media vitriol, and it was the clear culmination of a year of improvement. His producer, Richie Zyontz, told me last January that big improvement for Brady would come “between Year One and Year Two,” and that turned out to be the case.
Now, let’s get to the last few months: Brady is much more comfortable with the mechanics of the job, explaining plays and being himself in the booth. He’s never going to be on the Troy Aikman level of delivering unvarnished honesty about coaches, officials or the NFL, but he’s gone further in these areas during the 2025 season than he did last year. In talking to people this month on the Brady-Kevin Burkhardt production crew, they mention that he’s much better this season at describing what he’s seeing at the line of scrimmage before the snap.
“Looking ahead is always what we thought would make him a great analyst, and that’s so much better this year,” one crew member told me.
Watching the Rams-Lions game last Sunday, I was struck by how much Brady was ahead of the play in terms of how the teams should be attacking specific situations. Is he the best NFL TV analyst? Not at all. But there’s not much mention anymore of him being a television bust. Maybe that should have always been the case with a near-annual $40 million salary, but it could have gone a different way.
What else? Well, Brady got Fox Sports to make a strategic investment in Shadow Lion, the entertainment and marketing studio that he co-founded. (Shadow Lion and Fox will develop original series, films, event programming and digital content, though best of luck selling the public on a planned University of Michigan football program docu-series co-produced by Brady and Jim Harbaugh.)
Brady appears frequently with Colin Cowherd to help Cowherd’s TV show, and Brady launched a newsletter (“199”) that has actually made news and goes to millions (and reads pretty well). I know he’s helped Fox land some significant sponsorships for its NFL coverage.
Even the soccer team that he has a minority investment in, Birmingham City, secured promotion from League One after a 2-1 win at Peterborough United this April. The dude even did NFL power rankings this year, channeling his inner Peter King.
(He was also invited to Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s Venice wedding; no invite for Aikman, Collinsworth, Herbstreit or Romo, alas).
Yes, Brady’s role with the Raiders remains a conflict, and I say that not caring one iota about the competitive conflict for other NFL teams but with the viewing audience. There have long been conflicts of interest in sports media, including college football analysts employed by schools. That’s just modern reality.
However, there is a price, and that is subconsciously self-censoring because of the ownership situation. There is no way Brady can tell viewers everything he knows. (Ironically, Brady’s broadcasting career benefits right now by how bad the Raiders are, which limits claims of a Brady conflict helping the Raiders gain any championship advantages.)
My colleague Andrew Marchand just named Ernie Johnson as his Sports Media Person of the Year, and how can I argue with that? I’ve written dozens of pieces on Johnson, and he’s the gold standard of studio analysts. He’s also impossible to dislike. There are arguments to be made that ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith or Pat McAfee could be named here based on how much influence and leverage they have at ESPN.
But my pick this year would be Brady — and I’m now convinced he’s going to be in the booth for some time.
