Steve Wyche on an uncertain time at NFL Network

Steve Wyche has realized the benefits of versatility throughout his 17-year career at NFL Network, filling various roles as the league-owned entity has adjusted to industry headwinds. With widespread cord cutting that has diminished the estimated reach of the channel to fewer than 50 million homes, the league has consolidated network operations to Inglewood, Calif., reduced live programming and instituted cost-cutting measures.

Wyche has endured through all of the uncertainty in recent years, but he understands that even more sweeping changes may be on the horizon as the network prepares to be sold to ESPN. Derek Futterman of Sports Media Watch caught up with him ahead of the NFL season to discuss this pending deal, the upcoming season and more. The interview is edited for length and clarity.

Sports Media Watch: The nonbinding agreement for the sale of NFL Network and certain other media assets, along with the linear rights to the NFL RedZone channel, would subsequently grant the league a 10% equity stake in the sports media company. What are your thoughts on the deal?

Steve Wyche: There’s so many intelligent shows at ESPN where I think some of us can prosper, but I also say that knowing that our careers are now in the hands of people who don’t know us. ESPN might not need me, right? They might say, ‘Our football network’s done just fine without anybody from NFL Network, so when we take over, thank you for, whatever, but you can go your merry way,’ and it’s everybody in our building who feels that way.

That level of uncertainty is very scary, and a lot of us know we might not make it, so you have to kind of prepare yourself for that possibility; even though I feel like me and a ton of my colleagues could add a ton to some of the great stuff that they do, my career is now very subjective, and I’m not the decision maker in that situation.

Sports Media Watch: How has the nonbinding agreement between ESPN and the NFL affected morale within the company?

Steve Wyche: When you talk about morale, you walk into a newsroom and people don’t know… [and] living under that shroud for months has made it really tough on a lot of people. We’ve had cuts and cuts and cuts at our place, and to see some of your best friends who are great people, who are great at what they do get let go for economic reasons is gutting.

I’ve lost some of the best friends I’ve ever had for financial reasons or cutbacks, and again, this happens in every workforce in the United States, but man, it’s tough. You’re grateful for surviving the cuts so to speak, but you’re just sick for your teammates that got let go and for those who are still there who you have to rally around.

Sports Media Watch: Where do you see areas of potential growth in NFL Network being owned by ESPN?

Steve Wyche: The best assignment I get every year is I get to go do the door knocks for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. We run like an hour-show of that, but with the brilliance of what ESPN has done with their “E:60” programming or “30 for 30” or some of their specials, they can turn that into something. Instead of an hour-long show, this can be something that starts out as an hour-long show but then has legs to it to evolve on some of their other platforms, whether it’s their direct-to-consumer, whether it’s the variety of their linear channels.

They just have more avenues to be able to do more work and to showcase, maybe work with bigger bandwidth. And so we know what ESPN is. It’s an incredible media arm, an incredible news arm, and they’ve got the ability to put forth 24-hour programming, which is something the NFL Network — it just has never done.

Sports Media Watch: How has NFL Network adapted to the altered media environment in recent years?

Steve Wyche: When I first started, we had four field reporters. Now, we have like 10 or 11, right? We were in the bottom floor of a three-story office building, and now we’re on four floors of a seven-story massive office building at SoFi Stadium. … From where I sit, it’s hard to see, but the content [and] editorial landscape has changed with the shift in the landscape.”

Sports Media Watch: NFL games accounted for 72 of the top-100 broadcasts on television last year, according to data from Nielsen Media Research, and the league reportedly garners more than $12 billion per annum for its media rights. What makes the league such a compelling product for viewers?

Steve Wyche: The NFL has done a masterful job of making itself must see and must have. Regardless of if there’s games on Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, your team plays once a week, maybe twice a week if they’ve got a Monday-Sunday game or a Sunday-Thursday game. For the most part, if you’re a Packers fan, you’re going to see your team once a week, and so it’s a holiday as we like to say. When your team plays, it’s a holiday.

It’s not like the other sports, [such as] baseball, where your team is playing six days a week, or basketball where your team’s playing three or four days a week. It’s not a saturation for your team. Some people may say it’s a saturation for the amount of games, but not for your particular club, and so there’s that.

But then they’ve made the Draft, an event where nothing happens except a prospect walks up on the stage and hugs the commissioner. [It] gets millions of eyeballs. It draws hundreds of thousands of people from Detroit or Philadelphia or Chicago where it’s held or Green Bay out to fairgrounds to watch this. The NFL is so brilliant at selling its sport, at selling its athlete, at selling its clubs, at making tentpole events NFL Honors and the Draft and the Combine so exciting that that’s why people cannot get enough.

Wyche started his career in local markets upon his graduation from Howard University, landing a job with the Richmond Times-Dispatch reporting on high school and college sports. From there, he had stints in Miami and Atlanta where he covered a variety of professional and collegiate sports teams and continued to build his network of sources. By the time he joined NFL Media in 2008 as a reporter and senior writer, Wyche worked to grow at the national level and cultivate more professional relationships.

Sports Media Watch: How did your time reporting for newspapers shape your journalistic approach?

Steve Wyche: I think my years of being a print reporter helped really make me make a quick adjustment into the broadcast world just in terms of developing sources, utilizing multiple sources to tell a full and true story, or at least as much as one as you can if you’re on deadline, so I think that was kind of something that gave me a good floor so to speak, a foundation.

Sports Media Watch: What are the benefits and challenges of working for a league-owned media entity?

Steve Wyche: When I first took the job, that was a tough thing for me to get over. Like, ‘Oh man, I’m going to be covering the employer that signs my paycheck,’ and the good thing for me is very much early in the process, I was told that the NFL believed if there was breaking news, it’s going to get reported, so why not report it on the NFL Network or NFL.com.

… I have been incredibly critical of the NFL for its hiring practices, for the lack of diversity, for the way it handled some of the Deflategate stuff, for the way it handled some of the Bountygate stuff, but I think because I used the means to justify the criticism, all they could say is, ‘Well, okay. It’s fair. You laid it out there.’”

Sports Media Watch: You were the first to report on why San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the playing of the U.S. National Anthem in 2016. How did you go about approaching what became a story that generated national headlines?

Steve Wyche: I call it time-capsule reporting where I had to understand the environment, the atmosphere and the societal things that were going on around me because what Colin Kaepernick did was not a sports protest, it was a societal protest. So I tried to encompass all of that in fair standing, without picking a side, in trying to convey not just what Kaepernick did, but why he did it, and I thought the ‘Why’ was very, very important to keep things in the proper context.”

As the football season approaches, Wyche is aware that he may need to endure 19-hour days in order to effectively cover a game and then travel upon its conclusion. Through it all, he speaks with a variety of people and theorizes that genuine reporting digs deeper than superficial circumstances or developments people can find with a simple internet search. On the contrary, he is making phone calls, sending email and aiming to dig deeper.

Sports Media Watch: How do you maintain stamina throughout the football season?

Steve Wyche: If I’m in the field — heck, I might be at a stadium at 7:00 in the morning covering a game that doesn’t kick off until 1:00, doesn’t finish until 4:30, then I’m going to the postgame, and then I’m traveling. It’s 18-19-hour days, but the one thing I always keep in mind that I tell people — you can never complain about a long day of covering football and being on TV.

There’s a billion people who want our jobs, and we’re not putting shingles on roofs or laying tar on roads in the middle of the summer, so a hard day’s work for what I do is nothing compared to what a lot of other people do to put food on the table.

Sports Media Watch: What keeps you motivated to do your job each day?

Steve Wyche: Every day, I wake up and I say, ’10 million people want my job.’ I’m competitive, man. I’m competitive. There’s not a day I don’t enjoy what I’m doing. When I was younger, I did landscaping, I did back-breaking work, and I wasn’t built for it so to speak, and so I understand how precious of an opportunity it is that I have to do what I do every day. It never gets mundane, ever, and that’s how I approach every day of my life when it comes to my career.