Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick reunited on NBC

July 8, 2008

On a busy Monday on the NFL broadcast front, Dan Marino officially lost one of his two TV gigs, as expected, and Dan Patrick rejoined former ESPN “tag-team” partner Keith Olbermann, this time, at NBC.

The details:

- Inside the NFL, moving from HBO to Showtime, unveiled its new cast: CBS studio host James Brown, NBC’s Cris Collinsworth and CBS lead analyst Phil Simms. Collinsworth is the only commentator accompanying the show in its move from HBO, whose Inside the NFL cast also featured Bob Costas, Marino and Cris Carter.

CBS, which is producing the program for Showtime, will add a fourth commentator - either a permanent analyst, analysts on a rotating basis, or current players on bye weeks. Marino wasn’t invited to move to Showtime but will keep his job in CBS’ studio.

“We wanted to have some connection to the HBO show with Collinsworth,” CBS Sports president Sean McManus said. “We wanted to have some CBS presence, but we didn’t want it to be a CBS show in its entirety. Dan has a really important role with CBS Sports. It was more of a numbers game. It wasn’t so much we didn’t want Dan on the show. I think Dan understands that.”

Inside the NFL will run 23 weeks on Showtime, beginning at 10 p.m. on Sept. 10. HBO dropped the show after 31 years.

- Patrick and Olbermann - perhaps ESPN’s most popular SportsCenter team ever before Olbermann left - will be reunited 11 years later as cohosts (along with Costas and others) on NBC’s Football Night in America at 7 p.m. Sundays this coming season.

Patrick and Olbermann, who have done some radio together in recent years, will split up most of the narration of highlights. Besides Costas, the other cast members also return - Collinsworth, Tiki Barber, Jerome Bettis and Peter King.

“Bob will do fewer highlights, and he knew this when he was pushing for this idea more than 15 months ago,” NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol said. “Costas has never counted lines in his life.”

Under terms of his departure from ESPN, Patrick wasn’t allowed to take the job with NBC last season. But beginning Sept. 1, ESPN can no longer restrict Patrick’s TV opportunities.

“When we worked together from 1992 to ’97, we were as good as any five people in the business,” said Olbermann, who anchors a weeknight news show on MSNBC. “The undercurrent was for him to crack me up or me to crack him up.”

Patrick - who has a syndicated radio show and writes a column for Sports Illustrated - said when Olbermann left SportsCenter for a job at Fox, “I said you’ll never get this again. We never tried to understand why it worked. It just did.”

Patrick’s Olympic duties for NBC will begin at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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