Gruden will replace Kornheiser on 'Monday Night Football'

A month after John Madden shook up the NFL broadcasting landscape by announcing his retirement from NBC's Sunday night package, another significant prime-time change took place Monday.

ESPN announced Tony Kornheiser will be replaced on its "Monday Night Football" telecasts by former NFL coach Jon Gruden. Gruden, who was fired by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in January after seven seasons, will join play-by-play man Mike Tirico and analyst Ron Jaworski.

Kornheiser, a longtime sports columnist for the Washington Post and most recently a popular co-host of ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption," received mixed reviews for his work on "Monday Night Football" the past three seasons. ESPN officials said the decision to leave was Kornheiser's and was because, in large part, of his fear of flying.

Kornheiser had an arrangement to travel by bus to the majority of games but at times was forced to travel via airplane because of the length of some trips. "I am totally grateful for the MNF opportunity that I truly enjoyed the last three seasons," Kornheiser said in a statement. "I feel we got better each year. My fear of planes is legendary and sadly true. When I looked at the upcoming schedule it was the perfect storm that would've frequently moved me from the bus to the air. I kept looking at the schedule the past month and wanted to find a way to quietly extricate myself."

Gruden, 45, served as an analyst for the NFL Network during the scouting combine and draft this year. Although it wouldn't be surprising to see him get back into coaching, Gruden declined to address the length of his contract with ESPN or how long he might want to stay in the booth.

"I coached for 23 years and I'll be honest with you, I love the National Football League," Gruden said. "It's the best players, the best coaches and it's the best competition you can find from top to bottom every year. I miss it. But I'm a very short-term-goal-oriented person. I can't bite off too much more than I can chew. I'm really focused right now on what's ahead, and this is a great challenge."

Comcast and the NFL are close to settling a long-running dispute and the potential agreement would put the NFL Network on the cable giant's digital-basic tier, according to multiple reports. The channel has been carried as part of a more expensive and less viewed Sports and Entertainment tier.

In an effort to make the NFL Network more attractive, it would be bundled on Comcast with the Red Zone Channel, which is part of the league's "Sunday Ticket" package and airs live look-ins at games. The NFL also is negotiating to extend its TV deals with CBS and Fox by two years through 2013 as part of these talks. Those two networks would be affected if the Red Zone channel went from being exclusively on DirecTV to cable systems, such as Comcast.