BTN president likes Millen hire

IOWA CITY - Adding veteran football analyst Matt Millen brings value to the BTN broadcasting lineup this fall, BTN President Mark Silverman said this week.

Millen, a former NFL player and team executive, has a wealth of broadcasting experience at Fox and ABC/ESPN. He will be the network's top Big Ten game analyst and participate on weekly football shows throughout the Fox family of networks. BTN is co-owned by Fox (51 percent) and the Big Ten Conference (49 percent).

'Having Matt Millen and Glen Mason do our top two games each week, we're really excited about it,” Silverman said. 'We think it upgrades our roster. Chuck (Long) will still be doing our games as well.

'This is a national broadcast guy for many years. So we're excited to add Matt to the family.”

Millen played college football at Penn State - then an independent - before joining the Oakland Raiders in 1980. As a linebacker, he won two Super Bowl rings with the Raiders, then one each with the San Francisco 49ers and Washington Redskins. After retirement, he spent several years as an NFL color analyst with Fox before becoming the Detroit Lions' chief executive officer in 2001. He left midway through the 2008 season, in which Lions finished 0-16 and was 31-84 during his tenure.

Since 2009, Millen has broadcast college football games on ABC/ESPN, including last year's Iowa-Nebraska regular-season finale and a pair of Big Ten bowl games.

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