Broadcaster or Front Office Guy?

The NFL and its broadcast partners don't want to admit it, but they've got a problem on their hands.  It started when Tom Brady was allowed to stay in his role on FOX's No. 1 broadcast team after becoming a part-owner of the Raiders, an obvious conflict of interest that no one seemed to care about.  Now Troy Aikman is consulting with the Dolphins on their GM search.  The real capper is Matt Ryan, though.  He hopes to run the Falcons' football operations department and still be a panelist on The NFL Today.

Anyone with eyes can see the ginormous conflict of interest that would exist should CBS and/or the NFL allow Ryan to be both an active member of a team's front office and a broadcaster.  Broadcasters are supposed to be neutral and, at times, critical.  How could anyone possibly expect Ryan to be either?  How is he supposed to be objective about anything regarding the Falcons, a team whose success he's directly invested in?  Likewise, would he actually be honest when it comes to rumors surrounding Atlanta's potential personnel decisions?

Then there's the insider information he'd stand to receive.  Or lack thereof.  Seriously, why would anyone from the Saints, Bucs or Panthers tell him anything?  Every team would have their guard up around him, but especially Atlanta's NFC South rivals.  It would change the dynamic of his relationship with all 32 teams (including the Falcons).  Which would directly impact his ability to do his broadcasting job.  Without those relationships, what could he actually bring to a broadcast?

Not to mention the fact that neither of these are part-time jobs.  We're not talking about Michael Strahan doing Good Morning America during the week and FOX NFL Sunday here.  Strahan's able to manage both jobs because (A) they're in the same field, (B) he's still able to do all of his NFL prep work and, most importantly, (C) being on GMA doesn't affect his ability to remain neutral, which is a necessity for a national broadcaster.

Running a team's entire football operations department, meanwhile, is not a part-time gig.  It's a daily, hands-on job where you have intimate knowledge of everything that's going on with the organization.  It isn't hard to envision that job conflicting with his role at CBS.  Likewise, it's easy to picture a scenario where his CBS duties interfere with his role in Atlanta.  How can he be in the NFL Today studios in New York on Sundays when he'd also likely be expected to attend Falcons games?  

It's crazy how we're even talking about this as a possibility!  The potential conflicts of interest are so vast and so obvious!  It isn't just that, though.  It's how it would affect his ability to do both jobs.  Broadcasting is not a side job.  If you want to be a broadcaster, take it seriously and treat it like the profession it is.  If you want to be in the Falcons' front office, fine.  But then you can't also be a broadcaster.  You have to pick!  That should be so self-evident I can't even believe I have to explain it!

But again, the NFL really has no one else to blame for opening this can of worms.  The Brady situation and all the special rules they had to come up with for him is what set this whole thing in motion.  Because the NFL made an exception for Tom Brady, why wouldn't they do it for others?  Sure, Brady has the star power and FOX is paying him a ton of money, so they were invested in finding a solution that worked.  But now that the precedent's been set, it'll be hard to pull it back.

While he was greatly improved this season, Tom Brady wasn't good in his first year at FOX.  Everyone knows that.  The limitations that were placed on him certainly didn't help and probably contributed to the learning curve being even steeper.  Among other restrictions, Brady wasn't allowed to enter team facilities and had to do production meetings remotely.  Most NFL broadcasters acknowledge that watching practice and having those one-on-one meetings with players and coaches are among the most important parts of their weekly prep.  Brady couldn't do that (at least not in person) last season.  He also couldn't criticize officials (although the NFL later clarified that he could, within reason).

His situation is slightly different in that, since FOX primarily covers the NFC and the Raiders are a terrible AFC team, it's unlikely that Brady will actually be in the broadcast booth for a Raiders game.  At least not for a while.  But what happens when and if that day actually does come?  Would FOX ever actually have the Raiders' part-owner in the booth covering his own team?  How would that broadcast have any shred of credibility and neutrality?  (Kevin Burkhart's the consummate professional, but he'd unfairly be guilty by association.)

Even though Brady is only a part-owner in Las Vegas, the conflicts of interest are still there and still just as obvious.  Especially now that he's becoming more hands-on in the Raiders' operations.  We know that he went over the game plan with Pete Carroll every week last season, and now he'll be leading the search for Carroll's replacement (while also calling playoff games for FOX).  He won't be going into those interviews as a broadcaster.  He'll be going into them as a team executive.  It's a completely different dynamic.

And you know it won't stop there.  As Brady gets more involved in the day-to-day with the Raiders, it'll have an even bigger impact on his job at FOX.  It seems pretty clear that his ultimate goal is franchise ownership.  Even before he started at FOX, there were questions if he'd make it thru his entire contract before leaving for a front office position.  Because they don't want to lose him, FOX is letting him do both.  But they shouldn't.  Because you need to be all-in on whichever job you choose.

With Aikman, it's a little different.  He's one of the best in the business and has been for two decades.  No one has ever questioned Troy Aikman's ability as a broadcaster or his neutrality or impartiality.  Now, because he signed on as a consultant for the Dolphins during their GM search, that credibility suddenly is being questioned.  And, because he calls Monday Night Football, it's a near certainty that Aikman will do at least one Dolphins game at some point next season.

However, Aikman's role, as far as we know, is limited to being a consultant.  ESPN has said that they don't see it interfering with his role at the network, and, if that's all he's doing, I don't think it will.  Working as a consultant isn't the same as being directly involved in the day-to-day operations of the team.  Not only is it not full-time, it's temporary by nature.  His working with the Dolphins is limited to assisting in their GM search.  Once that's done, his job, conceivably, will be over.  If it becomes a longer-term gig, different story.  But consulting with the Dolphins for a couple months and having nothing to do with the team afterwards shouldn't impact his status at ESPN at all.

Whether there's a conflict of interest with Troy Aikman or not, the fact that we're even talking about it is, once again, because of Tom Brady.  The NFL and FOX decided that they were OK with Brady working as a broadcaster and being part-owner of the Raiders.  They didn't need to allow it, but they did.  And it's why Matt Ryan thinks he can get away with doing essentially the same thing.  Someone needs to step in and stop this madness.  Because it's getting out of control.  Already.