Richie Zyontz and Rich Russo reflect on FOX Sports’ place in the media as the NFL’s 30th season begins

Richie Zyontz and his CBS crew were in Washington late in the 1993 NFL season when they heard strange news.

“We found out that a company called FOX got football,” he said. “Nobody knew anything about FOX.”

CBS had aired NFL games since the mid-1950s, and the league’s contract renewal had always been a fait accompli.

“It was as common at CBS as a three-martini lunch,” Zyontz said, “which a lot of CBS executives at the time knew very well.”

What they didn’t realize was how badly FOX wanted to do business with the NFL — so much so that FOX eclipsed CBS’ $100 million renewal offer for the NFC package.

Next season would be FOX’s first NFL broadcast, and when the games begin on Sunday, the network will start its 30th, a stunning feat given its stunning debut in US sports media backed by Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch.

Those games include the Packers-Bears at 3:25 p.m., the window that FOX named America’s Game of the Week. The network’s longtime principal producer-director team, also from CBS, Zyontz and Rich Russo, will helm the show in the production truck outside Soldier Field.

The duel and the setting could bring back memories for the pair, who worked with acclaimed duo Pat Summerall and John Madden on CBS and FOX.

“Chicago-Green Bay, Madden-Summerall. It’s like a hand in a glove,” Zyontz said. “John loved Chicago. He loved the sporty atmosphere. He loved it when people talked about bears in the fall. The weather was going to get cold. He loved cold weather. He called it “hot weather”.

“Russo and I were on his crew for several years and we have so many memories of hanging out with John in Chicago, sitting in hotel lobbies and taking walks in the freezing cold weather. John loved the Bears games.”

In June 1994, Zyontz joined FOX as a producer on the Dick Stockton-Matt Millen crew. David Hill, another Australian Murdoch hired to run FOX Sports, called Zyontz to Los Angeles to discuss production of a preseason NFL special. Based on his CBS experience, Zyontz assumed the show would be quite simple: Gather some analysts and have them talk about the teams and players.

Hill had other ideas.

“He talked about things that I hadn’t considered,” Zyontz said. “‘We need a wizard; “We need a comedian.” I think: This guy plays three-dimensional chess and I can’t even find a chess board.

“That was just how FOX was. It was: try things, do things; Don’t rely on what you know or have done. And I think it’s been an eye opener for all of us and made us all better.”

Hill also brought in Ed Goren from CBS to oversee football production and they set about building FOX Sports. But at that time the only games played by the young network were football. Madden jokingly called the company FOX Sports – singular.

Russo started at FOX as an assistant director on the Kevin Harlan-Jerry Glanville crew before returning to Zyontz the next year with Summerall and Madden. Russo would benefit from FOX’s expansion into other sports.

“FOX has really opened up opportunities for a lot of people in our space,” Russo said. “Because what happened was it was football, then football and hockey, then football, hockey and baseball. And then NASCAR and then NFL Europe for me. It gave many of us the opportunity to grow in this business.”

FOX has also expanded the business itself. Hill invented the “Fox Box,” football’s first scoring bug. It initially angered some viewers, and according to Hill, one was so alarmed that it threatened Hill’s life. It’s now ubiquitous on sports television.

And 30 years later, the same is true for FOX.