Fox Sports 1, as a network that plans to be a 24-hour sports network should, is hiring a ton of people to fill all their various slots on the network. Some fairly high profile former athletes have been reported as headed to the network in recent days.
Fox Sports 1 adds to stable with Urlacher, Chelios
Urlacher will contribute to ‘Fox Football Daily,’ while Chelios will be the network’s NHL and Olympic hockey analyst.
Ronald Martinez
The biggest hire would be former Chicago Bears linebacker, Brian Urlacher. He confirmed to the Chicago Tribune last week that he’ll be joining the network as a football analyst. Urlacher, who retired in May after a 13-year career, will be an analyst on Fox Football Daily, an NFL-centric show which will air weeknights on FS1. Urlacher is the first new hire for Fox Football Daily since the show was announced. Donovan McNabb and Ephraim Salaam have also been hired by the network, but those two will contribute to Fox Sports Live.
In his regular must-read column, Richard Deitsch reported that Fox had made a few Olympics-specific hires. The biggest of the names is Chris Chelios, who has been hired as the network’s NHL analyst. He counts as “Olympics-specific” because he’ll also be breaking down the hockey tournament in Sochi. Chelios -- who, because he played so long, is four years older than lead NBC NHL analyst Eddie Olczyk -- will appear in studio as well as from a live in-home camera to comment on breaking news.
FS1 also announced that Michelle Kwan will break down the figure skating competition for the network. Kwan joins a team that includes Picabo Street and Andy Finch. Fox is making an aggressive push to cover the Olympics, something that has been a bit of a challenge for ESPN and many other networks that don’t hold broadcast rights to the games.
Finally, Fox announced the cast for their new daily soccer show, conveniently titled Fox Soccer Daily. Canadian broadcaster Julie Stewart-Binks will host the program, which airs weekdays at 4 p.m. ET. Current Fox Soccer Channel analysts Eric Wynalda, Brian McBride and Warren Barton will also be a part of the show. Grant Wahl, Georgie Thompson and Dr. Joe Machnik will also contribute to the program.
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