With Penn State grad Rich Russo leading, the Super Bowl broadcast is a team effort

Rich Russo isn’t naive.

The longtime sports television director appreciates the fact that his Super Bowl broadcasts have been among the most popular ever.

Russo has directed three Super Bowls for Fox, all in the past 10 years, and up to this point they rank second (XLVIII in 2014), fifth (LI in 2017) and sixth (XLV in 2011), respectively among the most-watched television broadcasts in American history.

But Russo, a 1984 Penn State graduate in broadcast journalism, isn’t jaded by the success he’s had, either.

So when Super Bowl LIV kicks off on Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium, Russo and his crew will do what they always do and go back to sports TV basics.

“We just have to treat it like a football game — I’d be lying if I said it’s just another game but honestly once the ball is kicked, you can’t think about the 120 million people that are watching the game,” Russo said. “You have to just do your thing.”

The Massapequa, New York, native and one-time broadcast journalism major seems almost nonchalant.

After experiencing what he described as “nervous energy” when he directed his first Super Bowl, and despite working in an atmosphere he says is “organized chaos,” Russo can now just go with the flow.

Part of that is his experience, part of it is the people he works with, but it’s certainly aided by the fact that preparation for the NFL title game begins almost 10 months before the ball is even snapped.

“(It) really started after last year’s season and before this year’s season. We’ll go to the stadium once the season is completed,” Russo said. “Maybe a month or two months after that, we’ll go to the stadium and do a complete camera survey.”

A walkthrough can only tell you so much, though.

It’s preseason games, those matchups that often elicit disdain from fans, that ultimately prove to be immensely valuable for Russo and his crew.

“We’ll go to the stadium a few more times and we actually get a preseason game in Miami. Specifically for Super Bowl years, we always request to do a game in the city and the stadium that we’re broadcasting from for the Super Bowl,” Russo said. “It just helps to have a familiarity with the stadium, with the trucks, where the trucks are gonna be parked, and then we can always use that time in and around the preseason game to do more walkthroughs and to look at some additional camera angles.”

All of this preparation is meant to lead to the execution of Russo’s two main goals — supporting Joe Buck, Troy Aikman and Fox’s other on-air talent, and also to make sure viewers aren’t missing out on the moment and experience just because they’re watching at home on their couch.

“We have to be able to react, we have to be able to be instinctive and things happen very fast,” Russo said. “So if Joe and Troy are talking about a specific player, we have to make sure we’re showing that specific player, we have to make sure we’re going to the right replay. It’s all in sync. It’s almost like we’re always thinking ahead, but we’re supporting them, that’s really important.”

Buck certainly appreciates the help.

“They know where I’m going before I do, and I know where they’re going before they do. It’s a group effort to make this come off as seamless as we hope it does,” Buck said at a news conference here this week. “There are a lot of moving parts. But the stress that Rich Russo is under, the stress that (producer) Richie Zyontz is under, it’s a lot.”

One of the most essential moving parts is the pacing of the game on TV, which is controlled by one of Russo’s longtime colleagues, associate director Rich Gross.

“I’m in contact with somebody down on the field about starting and stopping the game. As far as length of time, there’s a lot of procedures from the NFL rules and regulations that are all gone over beforehand,” Gross said. “And basically, I say ‘OK, we’re going to go out here for a 2 minute and 20 second break, or we’re not going to take the break’ so that they know to proceed with the game.”

Gross also is primarily responsible for making sure all of the commercials — which cost more than $5 million for 30 seconds in 2020 — get aired, and that the transition from broadcast to commercial and vice versa is as smooth as possible.

That means the rhythm of the biggest American sporting event of the year, with the most money on the line, is largely a product of Gross’ instincts and his ability to anticipate what might happen.

“At this point in my career, I’ve done a lot games so it’s more instinctual to kind of get a rhythm of what the way the game is taking place and just the way it’s looking on the field,” Gross said.

Between Gross making sure the pacing is working, Zyontz producing and Russo handling many of the other aspects, Buck’s job becomes that much easier, which in turn leads to a better broadcast.

And if all goes according to plan, the team of Buck, Russo, Gross and others will reap the rewards of yet another broadcast, which will attract over 100 million viewers.

“I can’t even begin to imagine how they handle all that on Sunday. I have to do it with my voice and mentally trying to say the right things,” Buck said. “They’re giving you every picture and in some ways working a hell of a lot harder than I am.”

Russo has been a fixture behind the scenes in the broadcast journalism world since graduating from Penn State, winning 12 Emmy awards in the process, splitting his time between CBS and Fox and directing nearly every sport under the Fox umbrella.

But he’s quick to deflect the credit.

“You’re only as good as your people,” Russo said. “And we have incredible people.”

This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 4:07 PM.