Ndamukong Suh might not be the first NFL player that comes to mind when thinking about future broadcasters, but the Hall of Famer-to-be is someone to keep an eye on in his post-playing career.

Suh has met with NBC Sports officials about broadcasting possibilities and was one of 24 players selected by the NFL to participate in the 2023 Broadcast and Media Boot Camp, a three-day media workshop that connects players interested in broadcasting with people in the industry. When Suh was a guest analyst on “NFL Live” last summer, he impressed ESPN executives with how he answered questions. One ESPN executive this week called him “super impressive.”

Steve Wyche, the chief national reporter for NFL Network, was an instructor for the Broadcast and Media Boot Camp and spent multiple sessions with Suh.

“I love speaking to him because he’s such a smart, deep dude who wants to share or learn something about everything,” Wyche said. “As for my impressions of him, he would be great — especially as a studio analyst. Suh is a high-IQ thinker whose perceptions of people, situations and the game aren’t common. This is what could set him apart. Once he masters the mechanics of doing TV, he would emerge as a star. He’s not into hyperbole or winging it. He would put in the work and distinguish himself.”

Suh, 36, is currently a free agent — he played with the Eagles last season — and told the NFL Network last month that he has no desire to be in a training camp this year. He skipped training camp last year and made his 2022 debut in Week 11, so such a possibility could exist again. But Suh is making the investment in what a broadcasting career could look like, and every person I’ve spoken with in the industry has only glowing things to say about his potential.

Fred Gaudelli, the executive producer of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” and “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video, has been in a number of production meetings with Suh over the years and also interacted with him at the boot camp.

“He’s almost the opposite of what you saw on the field,” Gaudelli said. “He was a guy who really kind of pushed the boundaries, I would say somewhat tongue in cheek. Ndamukong is very thoughtful. I’d be surprised if he were a hot-take guy. He seemed to really consider everything before he spoke. He’s a little bit soft-spoken, not this gregarious personality, but he’s got these very expressive eyes and facial expressions. He’s almost the kind of guy that when he says something, you’re going to want to listen to it because you don’t think it’s going to be the standard fare. With Al (Michaels) and Cris (Collinsworth), we’d leave production meetings with him, we’d all be thinking, ‘Man, this is this guy is totally different than what he is on the field.’ After you meet him, you really like him.”

From my perspective, Suh would be an interesting fit for “Football Night In America” — a studio show that could use some fresh voices. His resume is littered with the stuff networks like — Super Bowl champion, a three-time All-Pro defensive tackle, and one of the best players at his position during his era.

“Of course, things that he did on the field lead to immediate perceptions of him being a guy who crossed the line at times,” Wyche said. “That’s he’s an unflinching brute that never smiles or enjoys life. He’s played into that, in part, by not being a public face or social media personality. He’s a D-tackle, for God’s sake. All of that would change as a broadcaster. People would immediately see his intellect and knowledge of football and life. I think he should be on every network’s shortlist.”

The Belmont Stakes is a long-term assignment for Fox Sports. Last Saturday’s broadcast was the official start of the company’s eight-year rights deal, which runs through 2030. So what you saw on Saturday — which climaxed with Arcangelo winning to make Jena Antonucci the first female trainer to win the race in 155 years — will undoubtedly get better. And it will need to because the debut broadcast was mixed, at best. Let’s break down the good and bad:

The good

• Fortune favors the prepared, and the broadcast got an epic reaction from Antonucci as she watched her horse make history.

• Triple Crown races are a navigation for the host broadcaster between catering to the heavy racing fan and casuals parachuting in. I thought Fox found a decent mix between highlighting each race and not overplaying the celebrity and pageantry aspect. They went extremely heavy on gambling — and that may turn off casual viewers — but the company telegraphed this, given Fox owns 25 percent of the New York Racing Association-controlled wagering service. That’s why you saw an avalanche of  NYRA Bets content.

• Tom Rinaldi had a great interview with Kelly Dorman, the father of Cody Dorman, and the namesake of Breeders’ Cup winner Cody’s Wish, who won the Metropolitan Handicap.

“Cody’s Wish” is named for Cody Dorman, a young fan who was born with Wolf–Hirschhorn syndrome.

Cody’s father, Kelly, joined Tom Rinaldi after the win by Cody’s Wish today pic.twitter.com/6SwPJaoRWQ

— FOX Sports (@FOXSports) June 10, 2023

• Host Curt Menefee did well handling all the elements that a host has to handle on a big race day — and this was particularly impressive given he has no full-time experience covering horse racing. (Charissa Thompson as well.) I would still make Laffit Pincay III the main host next year.

•.Trainer Tom Amoss was excellent and probably the best on-air person for me on Saturday. He educated on multiple races and was unafraid to be critical. Unless I missed it, he was the only broadcaster during the event who came even close to being critical of trainer Bob Baffert.

• Fox invested in aerial imagery for the telecast as well as having a reporter on horseback to interview the winning jockey. They did not skimp on cost. Appreciated.

• Loved seeing Tom Durkin back in a booth for a major race — that was an absolute masterstroke hire by Fox Sports executives. I just wish he could have heard him on the big call (more on that below).

The bad

• The audio for the Belmont was an absolute disaster. Durkin’s call was impossible to hear over the race traffic, the wind, and whatever else the audio mix picked up. It was particularly bad from the 3/4-mile mark on, and you could not cleanly hear his call of Arcangelo crossing the line.

• As viewers, we lost the graphic on who was leading just as we hit the top of the stretch. Given there were a number of horses closing, it made figuring out any superfecta result impossible in real-time.

• Recreating the non-racing scenes of Secretariat’s iconic win in 1973 was bold and credit for that. But given NBC’s Tim Layden, one of the most respected horse journalists in America, just published a long feature that offered legit questions on who took the iconic photo of Secretariat, the intentional omission of noting Layden’s piece was obvious.

• The Rinaldi-Baffert interview came off like an infomercial for Baffert from my perspective. Maybe you saw it differently.

• Jockey Mike Smith, one of the sport’s all-time greats, was in a vital position for Fox as the lead analyst alongside Amoss. The better decision would have been to use someone with much more experience, such as Gary Stevens, and let Smith get those reps on FS1’s coverage, where he would be aided by those who work in horse racing television regularly.

Episode 310 of the Sports Media Podcast features a roundtable discussion with Sports Media Watch founder and editor Jon Lewis and Austin Karp, managing editor/digital of Sports Business Journal. In this podcast, we discuss the Heat-Nuggets series matching the average audience from last year’s Celtics-Warriors series; the upcoming media rights for the NBA; the top-down view of the Pga Tour agreeing to partner with Saudi-backed LIV Golf and any viewer backlash; Leo Messi to Miami and what that means for MLS/Apple; Stanley Cup Final viewership; the first time the Stanley Cup Final has aired entirely on cable since being on ESPN in 1994; MLB viewership for the first third of the season, and more.

You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, and more.

The Netflix show “Full Swing” was filming when the PGA Tour-PIF-LIV news hit. Here was my piece on what they got.

Speaking of Tour golf, CBS Sports play-by-play broadcaster Jim Nantz had a fabulous call on Nick Taylor’s 72-foot putt to become the first Canadian to win the Canadian Open since 1954. CBS did a great job of capturing the tension and imagery of Taylor dueling with England’s Tommy Fleetwood over four playoff holes. Great stuff.

WALK-OFF WINNER FROM 72 FEET! @NTaylorGolf59 wins @RBCCanadianOpen with the longest putt of his career! pic.twitter.com/lJtiIM43vN

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) June 11, 2023

Very sad news about longtime ESPN director Kyle Brown, who passed away this weekend while working NCAA baseball in Winston-Salem.

Episode 309 of the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch features Kevin Van Valkenburg, the editorial director of No Laying Up and Chad Mumm, the executive producer of “Full Swing,” the PGA Tour series for Netflix. In this podcast, Van Valkenburg discusses the seismic news on the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and DP World Tour announcing they would merge commercial operations under common ownership; morally squaring how PGA Tour officials recruited the 9/11 families to be part of their fight, only to cut them loose when a better deal became apparent; the PGA Tour media rights deals through 2030 with CBS, NBC and ESPN; and more. Mumm discusses how he views this as both a fan and filmmaker; having cameras rolling at both a players’ home and the RBC Canadian Open when the announcement was made; how potential episodes will exist for Season 2; and more.

Some things I read over the last week that were interesting to me:

• The best piece I read last week: For 50 years, this image has defined Secretariat’s famed Triple Crown. Who took it? By Tim Layden of NBC Sports.

• Can Twitter’s Odd Couple Make It Work? Elon Musk and His New CEO Are About to Find Out. By Tim Higgins, Jessica Toonkel and Suzanne Vranica of The Wall Street Journal.

• Exceptional work from the CBS Sports’ UEFA Champions League studio show.

• What happened to Heather Mayer? By Andy Mannix of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

• For CBS Sports Network’s “We Need To Talk”: Eric Wahl, the brother of the late Grant Wahl, remembers his brother’s journalistic career and legacy of advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community.

• Did bad PR sink CNN’s CEO? By Lulu Cheng Meservey.

• Informative chart from Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch on the growth of women’s college softball viewership.

• The Disease of More. By Kevin Van Valkenburg of No Laying Up.

• A Mother’s Exchange for Her Daughter’s Future. By Jiayang Fan of The New Yorker.

• The Binge Purge. By Josef Adalian and Lane Brown of Vulture.

• One man’s quest to make pickleball quiet. By Mark Dent for The Hustle.

• Pulled high, rolled low or butchered at the back: The art of the football sock. By Richard Amofa of The Athletic.

• The Athletic’s Dana O’Neil has a great profile of Jessica Paquette, the first full-time female horse racing announcer since 1966.

• Trump’s Indictment Is Worse Than You Think It Is. By Jeffrey Blehar of National Review.

• Three days inside the sparkly, extremely hard-core world of Canadian cheerleading. By Jana Pruden of The Globe and Mail.

• The Athletic’s Pablo Maurer, Jeff Rueter and Felipe Cárdenas on how signing Lionel Messi will impact Inter Miami, MLS and American soccer.

(Photo: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)