The NFL Broadcast Boot Camp Is Where Today’s Players Become Tomorrow’s Pundits

For nine seasons, Kevin Minter had one of the most demanding jobs in the NFL. An inside linebacker, he was responsible for relaying signals to teammates and delivering punishing hits to the opposition. But now, four years removed from his last snap, Minter has swapped his pads for a mic, his uniform for a crisply tailored suit, and is trying to make the cut in another ultracompetitive field: television.

On a spring afternoon I caught Minter playing the role of color commentator alongside NBC play-by-play announcer Paul Burmeister. For this simulated game, they stared at a monitor that showed last season’s week-two contest between the Atlanta Falcons and Philadelphia Eagles. As Eagles star running back Saquon Barkley gashed the Atlanta defense early in the first quarter, Minter grimaced. Once a linebacker, always a linebacker. “These Falcons gotta step up in this run game,” Minter said.

After about 10 minutes the simulation was over—and—Minter looked like he had seen a ghost. Every player has a “welcome to the NFL” moment, a humbling episode that underlines the differences between the amateurs and pros. What Minter experienced here was probably the sports media equivalent. Calling a game, it turns out, isn’t any easier than playing.

“That,” he said to Burmeister, “was something else.”

Meanwhile, inside a cavernous soundstage that was blanketed with a green screen, Chase Edmonds stood alongside NFL Network’s Chris Rose. A six-year running back who last played in 2023, Edmonds was set to call the same Falcons-Eagles game, but before they got under way, Rose got his partner loose.

“Shake it out,” he told Edmonds. The two wiggled their hands, extracting the nerves from their extremities.

Moments later, with the camera rolling, they previewed the matchup as if millions were watching at home. The key for Atlanta, Edmonds explained, would be to establish the ground game. Once a running back, always a running back.

Minter and Edmonds are among two dozen current and former players trying to make the leap from the gridiron to the greenroom by way of the NFL’s Broadcasting and Media Workshop, which is better known by its original, punchier title, the Broadcast Boot Camp. For three days in April, the campers gathered at the NFL’s West Coast headquarters in Inglewood, California, where they were schooled by top executives, producers, and anchors. The program has become a prolific talent incubator, with alums scattered throughout the NFL’s vast media ecosystem: Dan Orlovsky and Jason Kelce on ESPN, Nate Burleson on CBS, and Richard Sherman on Prime Video.

But the boot camp also serves to puncture misconceptions, namely that the commentating business is easy. When he was finished with the faux game broadcast, Minter admitted that it was harder than he expected. “I figured the hundreds of interviews I’ve had throughout my life somehow will apply to this,” Minter told me. “It does not, and not in the slightest.”

Down the hall, other campers simulated a studio show. Former tight end Luke Willson and ex–wide receiver Jason Avant sat behind a desk alongside NFL Network chief national reporter Steve Wyche and Maurice Jones-Drew, a running back turned analyst and boot camp alum from 2009.

From a control room, producers whipped up chyrons to correspond with the topics at hand. As the banner onscreen asked which NFC team poses the biggest threat to the defending champion Eagles, Willson made an impassioned case for the Los Angeles Rams and their quarterback, Matthew Stafford. “I’ve never seen a human being throw the ball so well as Matthew Stafford, and he’s still doing it,” he said.

When they were finished, players were given feedback in private—a departure from the early days of the boot camp, when campers were evaluated in front of their peers by a panel of judges à la American Idol. Terry McLaurin, a star wide receiver for the Washington Commanders, was admonished for leaning too much on a verbal crutch.

“If you overuse the word great,” he said, reciting a familiar boot camp proverb, “then nothing’s great.”

Kyle Long, a retired offensive lineman, was urged to “paint a bigger picture” and to avoid “calling down-to-down results.”

“You get caught in the micro,” he said. “Zoom out a little bit.”

Long came to the boot camp because, as he put it, “reps are priceless.” The mock game broadcasts and studio shows, held on the final day, allow the campers to get experience on camera and behind the mic. But those simulations also double as auditions, as many boot camp alums have landed jobs on the backs of strong performances there.

“It 100 percent changed my opportunity,” said Jeff Saturday, an ESPN analyst who attended the boot camp in 2010. “All the feedback I got right away—from NFL Network, ESPN, NBC—was all like, No, man, you have the ability to do this on a grander scale.”

While the program was created for players, the boot camp has become every bit as valuable for the league’s media partners. If the first two days resemble training camp, the final day is a bit like the NFL Draft combine, where prospects interview with coaches and perform a series of on-field drills.

“The scouting side of it is very real,” said Mark Teitelman, the lead game producer for Thursday Night Football on Prime Video and a part of the boot camp’s faculty since 2021. “We are all always on the hunt for who’s next.”

Two days earlier, this year’s campers were welcomed by a relentlessly upbeat man named Gerry Matalon. The players had gathered in a screening room, the type of place where they normally chew over game tape. But this was no X’s-and-O’s session; Matalon, a communications coach and former talent executive at ESPN, led an hour-long PowerPoint presentation, rattling off a flurry of industry best practices and tips of the trade, typically delivered in the form of a neatly wrapped aphorism.

“Your clothing should add to your attraction,” Matalon said, “not become a distraction.”

A commentator’s appearance, he explained, plays a crucial role in helping them connect with an audience whose attention span may be scattered. “The three ways we engage an audience,” Matalon told them, “is how we look, how we sound, and what we say.” He broke them down, one by one.

Look: “How we groom, our attire, our body language.”

Sound: “Our pitch, pace, pause; how we project our voice.”

What we say: “The actual words.”

There was a lot of guidance like that as players cycled through a car wash of presentations and panels held in glassy conference rooms with names like Pick Six and Longest Yard. The league relocated to the space from Culver City in 2021, placing its offices a mere 50 yards from SoFi Stadium, home of the Rams and the Los Angeles Chargers. Campers arrived each day by bus with backpacks draped over their well-sculpted shoulders, giving the whole affair a back-to-school vibe. They meandered through the halls like students heading to second period, grabbing from an assortment of fruit and granola bars available in each room. Once class was in session, they took notes and asked questions with the attentiveness of teacher’s pets.

The cohort included guys who have been out of the league for years and free agents hoping to catch on with a team. Others, like McLaurin, 29, are still at the peak of their game. A self-described “planner,” McLaurin said the boot camp is about positioning himself for his next act—whenever that may come. “A lot of guys think, Oh, I’ll figure it out when I’m done,” he said. “There’s hardly been any guys who have been successful with that.”

McLaurin sat in the third row during Matalon’s presentation, feverishly taking notes. Seated behind him was Long, a former Pro Bowler for the Chicago Bears. Long comes by both football and broadcasting naturally: His dad, Howie, was a Hall of Fame defensive end and has been an analyst on Fox’s beloved pregame show since 1994. Growing up, Long spent weekends at the Fox studio in Los Angeles, mixing it up with Terry Bradshaw and Jimmy Johnson. “The guys on that desk,” Long said, “they’re my uncles, essentially.”

Long already serves as an analyst for a pregame show on CBS Sports Network and cohosts a podcast that covers the NFL. But even with his experience, Long thought a few days at the boot camp could do him well because it was an “opportunity to be around the masters” and broaden his repertoire. While his dream job is to be an analyst on The NFL Today, CBS’s flagship Sunday pregame show, Long also attended to get reps calling games from the booth. “I knew I wanted to do studio,” he said, “but you come to this boot camp and you get to try on a couple different pairs of pants.”

The boot camp origin story begins with Vaughn Bryant, a former manager in the NFL’s player development office. Bryant worked to help players find professional opportunities outside of football, a chapter that comes sooner than later for most. The average length of an NFL career spans only about three years, and Bryant’s job was to provide resources to ease the transition to civilian life.

Bryant once made that transition himself. After being drafted by the Detroit Lions in 1994, he bounced around the league for a couple of years before hanging up his cleats. With his playing career over, Bryant landed an internship at CNN, where a producer invited him to sit behind an anchor’s desk and simulate a studio show. Years later, when he started his job in player development, he kept thinking back to that day—and then he got inspired.

“I was like, Wait a minute, we could re-create this at the NFL Network or at NFL Films, and we can bring in all of our network partners, simulate every discipline and do that for our players,” Bryant said. He went to his next meeting with the pitch in his back pocket. “I already had a name for it: the NFL Broadcast Boot Camp,” he recalled. Bryant figured he’d have a year to get the program off the ground. His bosses had other ideas. “They were like, Nah, you gotta do this as soon as possible,” he said.

In June 2007, about half a year after Bryant floated the idea, the inaugural boot camp was held at the headquarters of NFL Films in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. Early interest was minimal: Only about 30 players applied. But players talked, word spread, and by the second year the league received close to 100 applicants. “You do it once and anything that the players have a good experience with, they’re going to tell their teammates,” said Bryant.

The boot camp has evolved with the media landscape, tailoring its curriculum to a world now dominated by podcasts, social media, and smartphones. But the shift is perhaps most evident in the players themselves, with this year’s campers boasting considerably more media experience than their predecessors. Along with Long, the group also included Willson and former wide receiver Stevie Johnson, who work as analysts for the Canadian sports channel TSN. Avant, meanwhile, is a commentator for several local outlets in Philadelphia.

Player-hosted podcasts have come to saturate the medium in recent years, with shows led by NFL stars such as Jason and Travis Kelce and Micah Parsons among the biggest in the genre. That represents another shift—specifically, in what teams permit. Jason McCourty, an analyst for CBS, said that coaches and front-office personnel expected a player’s focus to be entirely on football when he entered the league in 2009. “If you were drafted and you’re talking about starting a podcast or how you’re going to be on a local TV station, teams would look at you crazy,” said McCourty, who attended the boot camp in 2022. Now, he added, “teams are seeing there’s no way to avoid it.”

These days, with players Instagramming and TikToking their lives, they no longer need the platform or infrastructure provided by a legacy company to express their views, nor do they have to wait until retirement to launch their media careers. “I think in the beginning, the NFL didn’t want players to have too much of a voice outside of what was available,” said former standout defensive end Michael Bennett, who attended this year’s boot camp. “And now it’s like every player has a voice.”

Bennett is eyeing a role on a studio show, where he plans to “talk -differently” from the rest of the commentariat. “I think people always have the same conversations,” he said. “I think my ability to mix knowledge and humor is the key.”

As candid as he is charismatic, Bennett might have thrived in this current era of player-led podcasts. He and the other campers were able to try their hand at the medium, participating in a mock segment hosted by Cameron Jordan, a defensive end for the New Orleans Saints (and podcaster) who attended last year’s boot camp. Bennett chopped it up with Jordan and fellow camper Jaylon Smith, a linebacker for the Las Vegas Raiders.

The boot camp is the NFL’s most popular player development program—and its most successful. According to the league, two thirds of attendees have gone on to receive either part-time or full-time opportunities as a result of their participation. And that track record has made it competitive. The NFL received 104 applications for the 24 slots available at this year’s camp.

“We want the guy who loves the game, the guy who’s going to talk about it in a way where I’m going to watch every game because now I care about it as much as him,” said Tracy Perlman, senior vice president of player operations at the NFL. (Those who didn’t get admitted can take solace in the story of an ex-punter who applied three times but never got in. His name: Pat McAfee, the often-sleeveless commentator whose contract with ESPN is reportedly valued at $17 million a year.)

JJ Jansen, a long snapper for the Carolina Panthers, first applied in 2010. He didn’t have much media experience then, but in recent years, Jansen has hosted a podcast for the team and appeared on local radio. That experience helped him get selected to the boot camp this year.

After calling a simulated game with NBC’s Noah Eagle, Jansen got a feel for the unique rhythms between a play-by-play announcer and color commentator. “He would listen for things that I said, then he’d come back and set me up, and then it becomes conversational,” Jansen said. Producers encouraged Jansen to be more willing to levy criticism, an unavoidable part of the job that many players enjoy the least.

“I shouldn’t feel like I’m crushing anybody,” Jansen said of the guidance. “When you’re a broadcaster, you’ve got to bring your own opinion. I think one of the toughest things for players is being perceived as a hater or turning on players. But once you’re in broadcasting, your audience isn’t former players or current players. Your audience is the fan.”

Jansen has also gained experience working behind the scenes with his close friend and former Panthers teammate Greg Olsen, a game analyst for Fox. The two spend time discussing various scenarios that may arise in a game, and in the playoffs, Jansen has joined Olsen in the booth to serve as a “spotter,” helping the analyst identify tacklers and pass catchers. He told me that watching Olsen, who has earned plaudits for his ability to explain the sometimes-arcane strategy and rules of football, has helped shape his own understanding of the job. “Anybody can hit keys on a piano,” Jansen said. “You have to know when and how to hit it.”

Players Learn how to hit those proverbial keys at camp, a process that involves correcting their vocabulary. “Use great like you would use hot sauce,” Matalon said in his presentation. “Just a little bit to enhance the moment.”

The following day, Fred Gaudelli, executive producer for NBC’s coverage of the NFL, echoed the sentiment during a breakout session held in the Hail Mary conference room. “If everything is ‘great,’ ” Gaudelli said, “nothing’s great.” In a different session, Howard Deneroff explained that campers had to leave behind the team mentality. “Never say we,” said Deneroff, the former executive producer at Westwood One. “You’re not ‘we’ anymore.”

In virtually every session, the players were reminded that they can’t simply rely on their experience in the NFL. “This is not just showing up. This is a job,” Matalon told them. “This is not a football job. It’s a communications job talking about football.”

And they were told to expect grueling hours, especially if they want to call games as a color commentator like Troy Aikman, Tony Romo, or Tom Brady. “I know you guys work your asses off during the week getting ready for a game,” Gaudelli said during his session. “It’s not going to be any different here. It’s going to be the same amount of hours, if not more.”

ESPN’s Saturday noted that some players aren’t prepared for the workload. “I think guys get in and go, ‘Wait a minute, dude, I actually gotta go back home and watch this film?’ ” he said. “This is just the reality. There are some players who were super successful in our game who probably didn’t have to watch that much film. And then they get into this and it’s like, No, you can’t fake what happened on Monday night. You better have watched the game when you talk about it.”

Campers were given a taste of what goes into a broadcast on the second day, when they participated in a mock production meeting. As the campers sat around a long conference table in a room overlooking SoFi Stadium, producers from Fox, CBS, and Prime Video peppered them with questions about various storylines around the league as if they were hosts of a studio show.

When the discussion turned to the Pittsburgh Steelers, someone pointed out that the team’s newly acquired star receiver DK Metcalf had just gotten engaged to the pop singer Normani. Perhaps that could spur Metcalf to even greater production. The comment was teed up perfectly for Bennett: “It’s easier to get married than to get a mortgage,” he quipped, “and I think it should be the opposite.”

The producers howled with approving laughter, telling Bennett that they would try to summon that line out of him on an actual show. It was a revealing moment, demonstrating how on-air banter is cultivated off-screen. But it also underscored an enduring truth of studio shows: At times, they are most compelling when the hosts veer outside their usual scope of coverage. Good television is good television, even if it has nothing to do with football.

Bennett’s quick wit makes him a natural for a studio role, which is why he’s received inquiries from suitors in the weeks following the boot camp. But -other players aren’t as verbally gifted, even if they think they are. “We’ve been fooled into thinking everything we say is gold, but when you leave the NFL, you realize not everything you’re saying is gold,” said Burleson, whose hosting duties include work for The NFL Today and CBS Mornings. “And not only that, not everything you say is worth saying.”

Broadcasting also presents its own unique brand of pressure, given the public scrutiny that comes with being a part of the country’s favorite television show. The NFL claimed 70 of the top 100 rated broadcasts in the United States last year while expanding its footprint in the streaming world with a Christmas Day doubleheader on Netflix. Last February’s Super Bowl between the Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, meanwhile, was the most viewed single-network telecast ever, with an audience of 127.7 million.

“When you have the opportunity to entertain tens of millions of people, the bar is incredibly high,” said Teitelman. “And it should be.” A comic book fan, Teitelman invoked the famous Spider-Man axiom: “With great power comes great responsibility.” The media personalities who cover the league populate the NFL’s extended universe, drawing their share of the country’s obsessive gaze. Just as the turnover-prone quarterback can expect scorn on social media and in newspaper columns, the same goes for a tongue-tied broadcaster.

“Look, I’m not saying this is harder than playing football,” Gaudelli said, “but this isn’t easy.”