TO replace John Madden and Pat Summerall, Fox is adopting a three-man NFL announcing team.
As The Post reported last March, the network is expected to announce today that Joe Buck, Cris Collinsworth and former Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman will take over the booth.
The move comes just as the travented the concept of the three- ditional lineup at ABC’s “Monday Night Football” – which inman booth with Don Meredith, Frank Gifford and Howard Cosell – is pared down to a two-man team, Al Michaels and Madden.
After pushing Summerall off the NFL broadcast last year and allowing Madden to jump to ABC, Fox will sport a much younger line-up of announcers.
Buck, 32, won an Emmy as Fox’s No. 1 baseball announcer, but began football announcing only last year. He will, in effect, become the signature figure of Fox Sports from now on. Fox has a scheduled a press conference at noon today where it will be expected to make the announcement.
The NFL on TV has been on a slow, but steady ratings decline in recent years.
Efforts have been under way at all the networks to stop the decline – by appealing to younger viewers and by getting more competitive games into prime time.
ABC tried to spice up games two seasons ago by hiring comic Dennis Miller, an experiment it ultimately abandoned when it hired Madden at the end of last season
The new Fox trio is expected to make its debut Aug. 16, in a pre-season game between the Chicago Bears and the St. Louis Rams.
Collinsworth – a retired Cincinnati Bengal turned broadcaster – has been a popular analyst on the Fox pre-game and halftime shows.
Aikman, on the other hand, has limited broadcasting experience. For his first season in TV, he partnered with Daryl Johnston last season as a color analyst for the network’s secondary NFL broadcast team.
Buck, who began his career in 1989 as an Indiana University undergrad calling minor league games in Louisville, is the son of Jack Buck, the legendary 77-year-old Hall of Fame broadcaster.