NFL Legend Greg Olsen on the Preparation and Pressure of Calling the Super Bowl | The Game Inside The Games, Ep. 2

Michael Gervais (0:20)

Welcome to New Orleans and The Game Inside The Games, presented by Microsoft Co-Pilot. I am sport and performance psychologist, Dr. Michael Gervais.

Greg Olsen (0:28)

And I'm Greg Olsen. Together, we're pulling back the curtain on the psychology of pivotal moments that can make or break a Super Bowl dream.

Michael Gervais (0:37)

For those of you who don't know, Greg played 14 seasons in the NFL, and then following his retirement, became a sportcaster. And after just one full-time year at Fox, he was promoted to the number one team. Called the Super Bowl Broadcast and received Universal acclaim. That's pretty cool. You played in a Super Bowl. You've called a Super Bowl. Out of those two, which one had more nerves? Which one was more nerve-racking for you?

Greg Olsen (1:04)

I've actually gotten that question a couple of different times. And I think going into it, before I called it, I think I was actually more nervous before I was the broadcaster. And I'll tell you why. My whole life, I played football.

At every level, I was comfortable on the field. I always felt very prepared. It was just something that I had known. It's something that I had done my entire life. And it was an area where you don't always play well. You don't always have the best game, or everything doesn't always go your way. But I never felt uncomfortable on a football field. I always felt like I was in control of my own destiny. I was always in control of my own performance. And then obviously, the millions of moving parts around me, teammates, play calls, whatever's going on, the opponent kind of would make or break the final result. But going into that broadcast, so it was exactly two years ago, pretty much to the day, I was still only calling games. That was only my second full time season calling games. I called one season the year before on the second crew. And then as you mentioned, I got promoted to the A crew with my partner Kevin Burkhart. So going into that game, and we had called some big moments, the NFC Championship, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve. So we had some big audiences. But you're talking 100 plus million people watching. And you have no control over the game. You have no control. How is it going to come out? You're nervous. So I actually was probably more nervous before kickoff that day in the booth than I probably was on the sideline in Super Bowl 50

Michael Gervais (2:30)

Amazing. When you feel nervousness, how do you uniquely feel it?

Greg Olsen (2:34)

Yeah, so I think, and this is something I talk a lot about with my kids, is it's OK to be nervous. You should be nervous. I always feel like being nervous and anxious and really anticipating a critical moment of your life and whatever it is, it means you care. Right? Like anyone who doesn't feel that burden of, I want to do well, I want to do good, I want to be prepared. You know, so I always took it as a sign that I was in the right spot. Like this was something that I was meant to do. This was something that's really important to me. And you should care. I always fall back on my process going into something. How prepared am I? To me, my confidence came from my preparation and that was as a player. And then the same thing when I now obviously get up in the games to get ready to do the, you know, to call the games in the booth. So I know if I do the work during the week, if I've studied and I reviewed and I have my kind of set process that I do each day leading up to the game. And then finally, the morning before kickoff, I have like my routine that I fall back on. That was my life. That's how I survived. That's how I got through bad games. That's how I built consistency. It was all my routine, all my processes. And I knew once the ball was kicked off, I'm prepared to go anywhere. I've put the work in. And now you just hope for a good game that you follow along.

Michael Gervais (3:51)

So you're giving the answers to what confidence is. It's that feeling and that internal narrative that I'm ready for the challenge. I've done my work. I've been tested. I've wrestled with some hard stuff. And I'm ready to go for it.

Right. So when you were... The difference, though, that I want to better understand is you had a full support staff and you had coaches and you had people around you in your 14 years in the NFL to help you prepare. So there was some support there. In the broadcast booth, you were left really to your own devices to prepare. So talk about the preparation, how you crosswalked from sport preparation to broadcasting or professional, your next professional career.