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The
New NFL Today By George Stahl NEW YORK (AQB)--Craig James, one of the three new analysts on CBS' revamped The NFL Today, has a clear goal for the show this season. "Hopefully, we're going to say something on The NFL Today that is leading the conversation on Monday morning at the coffee machine. To me, that's when we've been successful." The "we" is the new team that CBS has assembled for its flagship studio show. James and former game analysts, Randy Cross and Jerry Glanville, join host Jim Nantz in what CBS officials expect is a livelier pregame program than a year ago. "It is a pretty entertaining group of guys in that studio," CBS Sports executive producer Terry Ewert said about the rehearals. "I don't think there's one of them that doesn't mind speaking their mind and telling it like it is. I think it's good combination of personalities, talent and information." CBS Sports President Sean McManus agrees. "You can never tell what the chemistry of a pregame show is going to be until that first show. But having seen what Terry and I have seen in rehearsals, I'm pretty confident that we've got the right team in place this year." That wasn't the case last year when the network matched Nantz with three broadcasting rookies, George Seifert, Marcus Allen and Brent Jones. The threesome's on-camera inexperience hurt the show, which finished a ratings point below Fox's NFL Sunday during the regular season (2.7 to 3.7). Changes were needed, McManus said. "It was a progression that started, I would say, probably in November of last year, when we realized that we needed to do some things to make our pregame show more competitive with the other pregame shows." CBS made sure that inexperience wouldn't be a problem this year by signing guys used to being in front of the camera. James has worked on college and pro football studio shows since the early 1990s; Cross has been an NFL game analyst since 1989; and Glanville is entering his fourth season as co-host of HBO's Inside The NFL. "The nice thing about it is all of these guys are broadcasters," Ewert said. "They are accustomed to working in studios, they're accustomed to the red light being on, they are accustomed to preparing as a broadcaster, and that's also very encouraging for this year's show." As for those who were on last year's show, Seifert returned to the NFL as head coach of the Carolina Panthers, Allen will produce weekly features for this year's show and Jones has moved to the broadcast booth, paired with Gus Johnson. "We've done two practice games with Brent Jones as an analyst," Ewert said, "and I think all of us has been very surprised with how good he is at breaking down a game. I think he's going to surprise a lot of people with his game analysis. It's been the terrific the two practice sessions he's had." Cross, who's been giving his former teammate some advice on calling games, also has confidence in Jones, "I think he's going to do very well." Johnson and Jones call the Baltimore Ravens-St. Louis Rams game at 1 p.m. Sunday. Cross certainly knows game analysis, having done it for 10 years, the last with Verne Lundquist on the network's second team. McManus said it wasn't easy taking Cross away from the broadcast booth. "We said at the end of last year that we were not going to break up the team of Randy Cross and Verne Lundquist, even though we very much wanted to move Randy into the studio, unless we found somebody who would guarantee that the quality of that team didn't diminish. The only person out there who we felt gave us that guarantee was Dan Dierdorf." "I think what we've done is kept our No. 2 team as good as it was last year, and we drastically improved our studio show by moving Randy in. Dan, to us, was really one of the keys in changing our pregame show and keeping our field teams as good as they've been. He was a critical and important element in the reshuffling this year." Another critical element, James said, is that everybody likes each other. "I really believe that in the time that we spent together in the spring and early summer, the four of us get along. That's real important. There's no pretension there.
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