Terry Bradshaw almost threw his initial CBS NFL offer in the washing machine

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Credit: Today

Terry Bradshaw is synonymous with Fox NFL Sunday, but younger fans might not even remember that the former Pittsburgh Steelers star got his broadcasting start with CBS.

As his playing career wound down in the late 1980s, Bradshaw began appearing as a guest commentator for CBS during its NFC postseason coverage. When he retired following the 1983 season, he signed a deal to become a full-time NFL game analyst for CBS, working alongside Verne Lundquist. In 1990, he joined The NFL Today as a studio analyst, working with Greg Gumbel, until Fox won the NFC rights in 1994, after which Bradshaw followed suit.

According to the folksy 77-year-old, he almost missed out on that initial opportunity to get the CBS job by leaving a critical piece of information in his pants on “wash day.”


“I was making, off my farm, believe it or not, a profit of $50,000 a year,” Bradshaw told Craig Melvin on Today’s Glass Half Full. “And I said, okay, I said, that’s plenty. That’s plenty. It’s all I need, $50,000. And so I went back to the farm.

“… And so when football was over with, I just went to ranching, and a limo pulled up one day. We were working cattle. It was Brent Musburger. And he got out, and he said, ‘You need to call this guy. He’s Ted Shaker at CBS. He wants to talk to you.’ And I said, Who? What? And he said he was going off to do a deal, but they’d send him down there because back then you didn’t have cell phones. And I never checked the answer service on my phone. I don’t even know how to use it. And so they sent him down there. Gave me the number. I put it in my pocket, and we talked for a few minutes and had a good thing. He wished me luck, and he left this country-ass town. I can guarantee you when he pulled off the highway, he said, “All right boys, lock ’em up.”

“And so I don’t know how many days went by. I put the note of the number in my pocket. I took the pants off because they were dirty. Each day I would change clothes. And then it was wash day. … My mother said, ‘Always empty your pockets.’ So I’m emptying the pocket. I went, ‘Oh, I’m supposed to call this guy.

Bradshaw says he finally called, though he couldn’t remember if it was for then-CBS Sports executive Ted Shaker or Terry O’Neil, and after some back-and-forth, they got down to brass tacks.

“He said, ‘Oh, I’m so glad you called. Hey, look, I know you don’t have an agent. Let me just tell you over the phone, we wanna hire you to do football games.’ And I said, ‘I don’t know how to do football games.’ ‘Well, you come here, we’re gonna teach you how to do football games. We’re gonna give you a 3-year contract, and you’re gonna make-‘ what did I make it? Uh, $100,000 a year,” he added.

Bradshaw admitted that he thought he was “terrible” as a game analyst at first, but after three years he got better. And while he and Luncquist got to call big games, he eventually started to feel he wasn’t having fun because they were never going to be the “first team” as long as John Madden was there. That’s what led him to transition from the booth to the studio, where his desire to entertain audiences made him a more natural fit.

Bradshaw also reiterated that despite his age and increasing number ofon-air gaffes, he has no intention of retiring. In fact, he hopes that Fox NFL Sunday has to cut to commercial because he just died.

“Can you imagine the ratings? It would be amazing. It would be a viral moment,” said Bradshaw, a born entertainer to the end.

The post Terry Bradshaw almost threw his initial CBS NFL offer in the washing machine appeared first on Awful Announcing.

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