EXCLUSIVE: Akbar Gbajabiamila is one of the new faces of joining the NFL Network show alongside Jamie Erdahl, Kyle Brandt, and Peter Schrager.
The former NFL star and The Talk show host talked to Deadline about his new duties on the sports show and how his parents inspired him to dream.
“This for me is a return to football,” he said. “I transitioned out and built my entertainment portfolio with American Ninja Warrior, with The Talk… And this is a cool mesh of the things that I’ve done because GMFB is football but also pop culture. It’s taking what’s going on in the world of football, outside of football and bringing it all together. Having been a former player get to talk about football, it’s cool.”
The opportunity to host GMFB came to Gbajabiamila as The Talk announced they were ending the show by the end of 2024. Gbajabiamila said he “started getting the itch” and told his manager he wanted to get his foot back into sports, adding, “I didn’t want to be on the road calling games anymore like I did when I first started off doing college football. That was a lot of prep. I’m a family man and have kids. I love the studio idea of being able to just casually talk football and tell everyone what’s happening.”
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When it was announced that GMFB was moving from New York to LA, Gbajabiamila’s team threw his name in the hat to be considered for the show, and the rest is history.
Gbajabiamila will be extra busy throughout the end of 2024 as he will be “pulling double duties,” hosting GMFB in the early hours of the day and continuing his co-hosting duties at The Talk.
“I’m going to mitigate the lack of sleep [and] I’m going to hire a driver during that time where I’m doing a lot of the overlap between Good Morning Football and The Talk,” he said. “But you know, I’m built for it. My parents came to this country from Nigeria. They were immigrants in the late 60s, early 70s and one of the things that they instilled in me was just hard work.”
He continued, “They started a business, my mom did hair, my father was a plumber. They started with nothing and were able to raise seven kids in Los Angeles, which in California is not easy.”
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Gbajabiamila’s noted that his “biggest hurdle” will be the traffic in LA and “being able to get from one point to the next point. But there’s enough time in between where I’ll be able to service both.”
As for the CBS daytime show, Gbajabiamila said, “It’s gonna be sad to see The Talk end. But it has been such a blessing, it was a dream come true for me. I wanted to always be on a talk show. I felt like I always have a lot to say.”
Good Morning Football airs weekdays at 8 a.m. ET on NFL Network. It is followed by an extension titled GMFB: Overtime starting at 10 a.m. ET on The Roku Channel.
