Culture
'He's our leader. He's our therapist': Curt Menefee is 'Fox NFL Sunday' host, unsung hero
LOS ANGELES — Terry Bradshaw spills a cup of coffee, but Curt Menefee doesn’t flinch. Menefee leans toward a tray not visible on television for some tissue to help clean up as Bradshaw continues to make a point about the Cincinnati Bengals.
Howie Long helps with the cleanup, and Bradshaw keeps talking. Jimmy Johnson listens intently.
Menefee then ribs Bradshaw about needing another cup of coffee, and Johnson uses coffee as a transition to talk about the Baltimore Ravens and Seattle Seahawks.
“So Terry spills coffee on live TV … now, how do you react?” Menefee said shortly after while sitting in a dressing room at Fox Studios. “Instead of going into panic mode, we made it part of the show, and we laughed it off and had some fun with it.”
It’s a funny moment in the studio. And Menefee, the longtime sports personality for Fox Sports, would tell you he has one of the most fun jobs in the world as the host of “Fox NFL Sunday.”
Curt Menefee (left) with Terry Bradshaw on the “Fox NFL Sunday” set. (Courtesy of Lily Ro Photography / Fox Sports)
It might be coffee one day. The next day, Johnson might get fired up talking about a coaching situation, or Long might have a passionate discussion about the Raiders, a franchise he played with for 13 seasons. Michael Strahan is as busy as anyone on the show with his multiple television jobs. He can be funny, or he can be dialed in and serious when discussing football. If the show had a script, it would go off-script most of the time.
But someone has to keep the show flowing. That’s where Menefee steps in.
His colleagues call him a friend, therapist and a point guard of sorts on the show. Menefee, 58, is in his 18th season as host of a show that’s all about football but might be best known for the wacky moments that make viewers laugh.
Menefee is not just the host; he’s the straightforward personality in an NFL comedy troupe.
“People never go, ‘You did a great job of breaking on the Cover 2.’ It’s, ‘I love it when you guys bust each other’s chops,’” Menefee said. “That’s something that people will remember from the show more than anything else: (Bradshaw) spilled coffee, and you guys laughed it off and talked about it getting on his suit.”
To understand Menefee’s importance, think about the cast. There’s Bradshaw, the four-time Super Bowl champion and Hall of Fame quarterback from the Pittsburgh Steelers dynasty of the 1970s. There’s Long, a Hall of Fame defensive lineman who won a Super Bowl with the Los Angeles Raiders. There’s Strahan, a Hall of Fame defensive end and the NFL record holder for most single-season sacks (22.5, tied with the Steelers’ T.J. Watt) who won a Super Bowl with the New York Giants. And there’s Johnson, a Hall of Fame coach who won two Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys and also a national college football championship at the University of Miami.
Curt Menefee (left) with the “Fox NFL Sunday” cast: Terry Bradshaw, Jimmy Johnson, Michael Strahan and Howie Long. (Courtesy of Lily Ro Photography / Fox Sports)
Someone relatively new to the mix is Rob Gronkowski, who won four Super Bowls as a tight end with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers and likely is headed to the Hall of Fame. Add in the ever-energetic NFL insider Jay Glazer, and that’s a lot of personality on set with the potential for television chaos. Someone might go on a rant with no one knowing the direction.
Menefee has learned how to let everyone have their time while also making sure the show stays on schedule.
“People have no idea what he does for us,” Glazer said. “He’s our leader. He’s our therapist. There are six of us on the show, so there’s 19 personalities — and Bradshaw and I got 12. For Curt to be able to keep us in check like this … you know, we’re family.”
The coffee spilling is just a microcosm of what Menefee means to the show. Glazer and Bradshaw both have publicly discussed some of their mental health struggles. Glazer said Menefee takes the time to check on them and has been a confidant when times are tough. When he’s dealing with a possible anxiety attack, Glazer said it is Menefee who often is the first to stop what he’s doing to help.
That’s because Menefee has built genuine friendships with the crew. There are offseason vacations. Glazer was Menefee’s best man at his wedding 10 years ago. Their spouses know each other, too.
Menefee said he’s one of the “rare” guests able to spend two days fishing at Johnson’s home in the offseason because Johnson usually only gives visitors one day. Additionally, Menefee watches college football with Bradshaw and Johnson every Saturday, where there’s bonding and where Menefee picks up insight into how they’re thinking about the NFL that might be useful on the show.
“I get to spend time with my best friends in life. That’s not a job,” Menefee said. “It’s just fun time. It’s just an extension of the blessings that I’ve been given and the joy that I’m able to have in life to be able to do this and call it my job. I know that not many people get to say that.”
The friendship is the foundation of what makes the show go. It allows Menefee to know when to let someone keep talking and also when to use nonverbal communication to tell someone to wrap up his point. Menefee gauges what’s working on the fly. He does all of this with show producer Bill Richards speaking to him in his earpiece.
What makes the show so much fun is the unpredictability — but it also can be stressful if someone can’t maintain order. The show isn’t rehearsed, so Menefee will react to a Bradshaw rant or a Johnson monologue on the fly. Controlling the room is an important skill to make sure segments don’t run long and sponsor reads aren’t forgotten.
Emphasis on “controlling the room.”
“I’m not ripping the guys, but if this kindergarten class is going crazy, I need a teacher to say, ‘Now we’re going to commercial,’” Richards said. “We can just let it go and these guys can go for an hour, we’d never take a commercial, and we’d all get fired. Curt keeping the train on the tracks, I can’t tell you how important that is.”
It also helps that Menefee has been on live television since he was 19 years old, going back to his time as a student at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He’s been trained to stay ready for anything.
Menefee took over as the full-time host of “Fox NFL Sunday” in 2007 after James Brown left for CBS. Long said he admired how Menefee handled being the “bullpen guy” as Fox first experimented with using Joe Buck to host and also call games. Menefee taking over meant the show didn’t have to travel to where Buck was working.
For nearly two decades, it’s worked. And friendships have formed in the process.
Curt Menefee (far right) with Jimmy Johnson and Jay Glazer at the Empire State Building in November. (Noam Galai / Getty Images for Empire State Realty Trust)
Menefee’s preparation is meticulous. The Santa Barbara, Calif., resident is up by 5:30 a.m. every day for meditation with his wife, Viollette, and to work out. The early start also allows Menefee to call or text various sources around the NFL on the East Coast who want to communicate early in their day.
Menefee likes to keep football to a minimum on Mondays so that Viollette has a day with him without the pressures of work. By Tuesday, he’s communicating with Richards about the vision for Sunday’s show. The rundown for the show is usually set by Thursday, which is when Menefee begins focusing on teams and stats that will be important for Sunday.
Friday is spent with a lot of texts and phone calls to people around the league. On Saturday, he drives from his home in Santa Barbara roughly 100 miles to a hotel room in Los Angeles for his weekly tradition of watching college football with Bradshaw and Johnson at their hotel around noon. Menefee likes to be back in his room by 5 p.m. to work on some of the written parts of the show, and he prefers to be in bed by 8 p.m. He’s then up by 4 a.m. for meditation and to arrive at the Fox studio by 5 a.m. for show preparation.
Menefee jokes that his football career ended in middle school, but he’s not viewed as a football outsider by his friends on set. They recognize the work he does, including visiting multiple training camps in the offseason and maintaining relationships and insight across the league to help the show’s growth.
He knows the sport and can juggle halftime highlights in multiple markets. He also can help someone with a bit of information on the fly.
“If I was in a pro football game show and I had to phone a friend for some kind of information, Curt would be the guy to call,” Long said. “Curt is so good with a lot of big personalities on the show. We’re not a rehearsal show. To be honest, I think that’s part of the reason why we’re successful, because what you’re seeing is genuine, authentic reactions to a first-time conversation.”
For all of the praise Menefee receives, he’s admittedly his own worst critic. He used to obsess over stumbling over a word or a mispronunciation. He said those things don’t bother him anymore, because, in regular conversation, those things happen.
His focus in after-show conversations with Richards is on the flow of the show. What worked for each segment? What didn’t? For Menefee, it’s more the big picture.
“Did I get Terry in soon enough? Did I wrap him up quick enough?” Menefee said. “Did I transition from this being serious to this being lighthearted or vice versa? I don’t think I’ve ever done a perfect show. I’m still striving, still trying to get there. I haven’t gotten there yet.”
“The best point guard is going to take a couple of shots, and those are the ones you might think about on the way out,” Richards said. “But he’s a great shooter, so he’s making most of them, so nobody cares. Curt’s mistakes aren’t something I spend a lot of time on, because there’s not a lot (of them).”
Glazer’s friendship with Menefee dates back to the 1990s when both were working in New York and Glazer asked Menefee to co-host a show, “Unnecessary Roughness” on the MSG Network. He believes Menefee is great to work with as a friend but added that Menefee can be “very, very, very hard on himself” after a show.
“I always tell him we kind of go as you go,” Glazer said. “So, you may think something wasn’t good, but the rest of us don’t see it. So, don’t put that in our heads. Our show is imperfect. We’re off the cuff. I’ll just say to him, ‘Hey, bro, you beat up on yourself, but the rest of us don’t see what you’re upset about. So, don’t bring it out. Let’s you and I just talk it up.’
“Then we talk it out, and then he’s like, ‘You’re right.’”
Therapist. Point guard. Perfectionist. The adult in the room. There are a lot of ways Menefee is described. His main focus, though, is making sure his friends look good on air.
He’s become a celebrity in his own right. The show was inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2019 — so technically, Menefee is a Hall of Famer like his panelists.
But if his friends are shining on air and the viewers continue to come back, he’s happy.
“The No. 1 goal is for people to leave the show feeling like they had a good time, that they enjoyed it, because entertainment is the first thing,” Menefee said. “The second thing is that they get some information out of it.”
Spoken like the adult in the room.
(Top photo: Noam Galai / Getty Images for Empire State Realty Trust)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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