NFL’s Broadcast Boot Camp successfully readies players for second career
SBJ’s Liz Mullen reports: Every year, in what’s been called the “four days of hell” known as NFL Broadcast Boot Camp, the league has a session it calls “American Idol” in which players in the camp audition for real network executives by interviewing other players.
It is one of the toughest assignments in the 14-hour-a-day, four-day camp, because the network executives are brutally honest, says Glenn Adamo, NFL vice president of media operations. One year, he said, a strikingly large offensive lineman was in the camp, and although that player worked his hardest, “He was always perspiring,” Adamo recalls, declining to name the player.
“It is a toughie,” Adamo added. “You are in a new career, and I will never forget [the offensive lineman] turned to us, and he said, ‘It is very obvious: I am a radio guy. I am not a TV host.’”
That offensive lineman did go on to get radio gigs after his NFL career was over. In fact, of the first about 100 NFL players who have been to Broadcast Boot Camp in its first five years, 67 of them are working in television, radio or some kind of broadcasting, Adamo said.
Some of the graduates of boot camp who have gone on to get television or radio jobs include Tim Hasselbeck and Damien Woody, who work for ESPN; Dhani Jones, who has worked for NFL Network, Big Ten Network and Fox; Derrick Brooks, who has worked for SiriusXM NFL Radio; and Orlando Pace, who has a weekly Rams pregame show on the St. Louis Fox affiliate.
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