How 'two guys from Jersey' – Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen – became NFL broadcast stars

Greg Olsen and Kevin Burkhardt go back a long way, and they have the photo to prove it.

Their NFL on FOX crew was out to dinner in New York City last week, the night before the network's No. 1 broadcast team rang the NASDAQ bell, and Olsen passed his cell phone around the table, reliving the memory once again.

High school football teams from Wayne Hills, Olsen's alma mater, and Wayne Valley crowded into a New Jersey restaurant two decades ago for a remote taping of a local sports radio show to hype the big game.

And if there was a big game in North Jersey, you can bet Burkhardt and his team at WGHT 1500 would be present.

There is admittedly only one problem, and no one really knows why, the best player in the game was somehow left out.

"The only regret I have: how am I not in that photo?" Olsen quipped. "Kevin's in it. My dad [ex-Wayne Hills coach Chris Olsen] is in it, my brothers are in it. Obviously I was there, but somehow I'm out of the frame. But you remember that night, Hills and Valley in the playoffs, and what an event it was. Now all these years later, knowing that KB and me are together as a team, it's hard not to go back to those days and think about how we got from there to here."

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Burkhardt broadcasted the biggest games of Olsen's banner high school football career.

Now they're set to call the biggest games of the sport, side by side, and a whole lot more after being elevated as the network's No. 1 NFL broadcast tandem, replacing the pairing of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, who left FOX to broadcast "Monday Night Football" on ESPN.

That journey begins Sunday when Burkhardt and Olsen - with reporters Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi - kick off their 2022 run in Minneapolis as Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers take on Kirk Cousins and the Minnesota Vikings.

In addition, FOX has two of the next three Super Bowls, including this season with Super Bowl 57 set for Feb. 12, 2023 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. Burkhardt and Olsen will ultimately be guiding millions through the most watched television event of the year, and not without appreciation for how they got here, and with tremendous excitement for where they are going as a team.

"We're two guys from Jersey: a kid from Bloomfield and a kid from Wayne," Burkhardt said with a laugh. "I don't think Greg or I will forget where we came from. It's surreal. It's kind of bonkers. We understand the roles we're in now."

Their origin stories are plenty different.

Burkhardt, 48, was born to be a sports broadcaster. His voice just fits the job, and he's worked at his craft for more than three decades. Doing play-by-play in his parents' Bloomfield home with childhood friend Dan Fusco, taking turns calling Nintendo games of Tecmo Bowl and Baseball Stars, Burkhardt fell in love with the intricacies of the dream.

"Fusco and I branched out, my brother [Brian] joined in, and we took a camera and two microphones to the bleachers and started announcing high school football games," Burkhardt said with a laugh. "They aired those games on local access, and that was a thing for us - we didn't know what the [expletive] we were doing, but we had fun with it, and that's really when I knew what I wanted to be."

Creating his own legacy

Meanwhile, the 37-year-old Olsen watched Discovery Channel as much as he did ESPN when he was growing up. His favorite television show was "NYPD Blue", not "SportsCenter", and when the University of Tennessee and others recruited Olsen as a blue-chip prospect, they leaned heavily on his infatuation with forensics and the FBI in an attempt to snag his commitment.

That career never materialized for Olsen, who ended up going to the University of Miami and then to the NFL, where he spent 14 seasons and finished his time with the Carolina Panthers as one of their greatest players in franchise history.

He and his wife, Kara, and their three children have left a mark on the community in Charlotte, too, leaving a legacy with his foundation's leading role in the creation of a new pediatric heart center at Levine Children's Hospital.

"I don’t know if in a million years I would have believed it if you told me this chapter in broadcasting would happen this quickly for me," Olsen said. "But here we are, and I’m trying to take advantage of it, maximize the opportunity and let what happens down the road play itself out. For this year, what a crazy full circle world to be back with Burkhardt and being able to do this together after all this year, it’s crazy how things work."

Burkhardt's journey has certainly taken its share of memorable twists and turns. After graduating from William Paterson University in 1997, Burkhardt took over as sports director at WGHT Radio, a 1,000-watt, daytime-only AM station in Pompton Lakes. He helped turn the department there into a varsity version of WFAN with fellow fledgling broadcasters who enhanced high school sports coverage in North Jersey.

Unable to break through at a larger station after six years, a frustrated Burkhardt left WGHT, put his broadcasting dreams on hold and became a car salesman for Pine Belt Chevrolet in Eatontown.

He hoped the career change would provide a spark following a move from Woodland Park to Point Pleasant Boro with his wife, Rachel, and son, Logan. For eight months, Burkhardt sold cars and sent his tapes to radio stations in New York and elsewhere, believing that his break would eventually come.

When one did, things happened fast. He worked for CBS Radio doing updates, moved to WFAN as the station's New York Jets reporter, and his biggest break yet came with SNY during New York Mets games, which provided the ideal platform for Burkhardt to spread his broadcasting wings and put his personality on display.

Following in the footsteps of legends

Within a decade, Burkhardt went from selling cars and nearly out of the broadcasting business to the national stage, which is where he remains, only now "the kid from Bloomfield" finds himself in a starring role. He's stepping in for Buck as the voice of the NFL on FOX, following in the footsteps of legends like Pat Summerall and Al Michaels, both of whom along with Buck and the Mets' Bob Murphy as those he has long admired.

"I was definitely frustrated about not getting breaks early in my career, but in hindsight, I don't think I was good enough back then to handle the opportunity I have now," Burkhardt said. "You learn through experience. You learn from watching legendary broadcasters. You don't copy them, you borrow ideas from how they do the job. The beauty of coming to FOX was that they hired me for me and my style. They didn't hire me and say, 'Come here and be like someone else.' They said, 'We're hiring you to be you.'"

Since joining FOX, Burkhardt has been the play-by-play man for more than 50 auditions with prospective analysts. Of that group, he considers Olsen, whose high school games he broadcast as the sports director of WGHT 1500 Radio in Pompton Lakes, in a class of his own.

"KB takes me into stuff during a game that I'm comfortable with, that I'm passionate about," Olsen said. "He's the ultimate partner. He's so good, so professional, so polished and smooth, he can make up for my being a novice and sometimes just winging it as I go. Everybody who's ever worked with Kevin is better because he's their partner."

Burkhardt has been a fixture in FOX's Major League Baseball studio working with Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz and Frank Thomas, among others. There have been plenty of "pinch me" moments that have eased his transition to the top spot in the NFL booth, including the realization that Burkhardt once had a poster of Thomas on his bedroom wall.

Now, in a sense, he's the broadcasting point guard for icons and a star athlete he once covered as a teenager alike.

And when Tom Brady is done playing, he's already been hired to join Burkhardt in FOX's top booth, which is even more surreal. For this season and perhaps longer, the list of broadcast partners for the NFC include Madden and Summerall, Buck and Aikman and now Burkhardt and Olsen.

"I feel comfortable in my own shoes, and I can handle this," Burkhardt said. "Part of the job is the spotlight that comes from it. I don't know any other way than to be myself, and Greg is the same way. Some of this I'll never get used to. Like ringing the NASDAQ opening bell with Greg and Erin when I was covering Greg at Wayne Hills. Like being on the roof of a stadium in Arizona for Super Bowl promo shoots. You are the spotlight, which is fine. It's different, it's not necessarily who I am. But just like doing Sports Overtime for GHT at The Grill with Wayne Hills and Wayne Valley, I'm cherishing the moment, Greg feels the same, and everything that's about to come our way. We're ready."

For these two Jersey boys, Burkhardt and Olsen, the games (and the stage) have never been bigger.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kevin Burkhardt, Greg Olsen go from North Jersey to NFL on FOX