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Notes By George Stahl and Randy Williams NEW YORK (AQB)--In what was suppose to be year 1 A.H. (after Hoss), 1999 will instead be Keith Jackson's 33rd year of college football at ABC. As Jackson might say, "The harder you try to plow the manure away, the faster it comes a-flowing back." However, when the Ol' Hoss came out of retirement on June 15 to handle only Pac-10 games and the Rose Bowl, he left his former No. 1 play-by-play post vacant. Which is exactly what ABC has decided to do - leave the post vacant. Instead of assigning its broadcasters a rank, ABC has instead decided to split the top chores among its top two remaining announcers, Brad Nessler and Brent Musberger. To further create confusion as to whom ABC might consider its No. 1 college football announcer, the network has decided to rotate analysts throughout the season. Nessler admitted his frustration with the decision in an ABC conference call last week. "I was disappointed, just because I'm probably Keith Jackson's biggest fan and admirer, I guess, and always has been. Brent probably feels a little bit the same way, maybe both of us would liked to have had a clear-cut No. 1 voice. "Keith knows how I feel about him. Brent and I have been friends since we were back at CBS together, so it's not a competition among any of the three of us, I don't look at it that way, but we're pretty competitive people. "You'd like to think that you've reached the top of your profession, and Keith Jackson's been at the top of it for so many years that you'd be crazy not to want to take that mantle or take that torch and keep the flame lit. I was ready to do that, and I'm ready to keep on doing it the way we've decided to do it," said Nessler, who will call the important Pigskin Classic between No. 4 Arizona and No. 3 Penn State with partner Gary Danielson. John Filippelli, ABC's new vice president of sports production, predictably predicted success with the current arrangement. "I envision it working out well. When Keith made the decision to return to ABC, all the speculation about who was going to succeed him was rendered mute. "I think we'd be silly to sit there and try to figure out the pecking order of who goes exactly where. I will leave it to other people to kind of sit there and try to overanalyze this because I really don't think it needs to be overanalyzed. It is what it is. We have fabulous people, we have a great schedule of games and, in terms of college football, we are probably unmatched." Filippelli said that in the end, everything will be the same. "Given that we do regional coverage, some weeks one region will be a little bit bigger than others. The next week, the next region will be bigger than another region. But I think at the end of the day, the games are all going to be - in terms of the exposure given to our people - relatively equal." As for mixing the teams around, Musberger said that while he enjoys working with analyst Dan Fouts, he's willing to change things up. "We are extremely comfortable as a team, but if they want to experiment with different people, I'm an old war horse. Just tell me where the airplane is, we'll get there and we'll get it done." "Obviously, it'll be different in those weeks when I'm not with him," said Musberger, who will work the No. 9 Ohio State-No. 12 Miami, Fla., game with Fouts at 2:30 p.m. Sunday. "From my standpoint, it's not going to matter much. I suppose I'll be impacted more by producers and directors than I will be analysts." Musberger said that in the end, the only thing that matters is the game. "In many cases, you're no better than the football game you're broadcasting. If we get good games, then we'll be fine. I think there are a lot of good games to go around." Nessler agreed. "I think over the last couple years Brent's probably actually had better games than Keith, as far as competitiveness, and that's the best part about it. We get games like Arizona-Penn State and Miami-Ohio State to get things going, it's not bad." Click to see George's review of the college football preview magazines or George's previews and picks of this weekend's games.
ESPN's College GameDay will start its season at 11 a.m. Saturday on the road in Happy Valley, Pa., for the Arizona-Penn State game. Remarkably, this is the first time ever that the GameDay crew has visited Joe Paterno's Nittany Lions. Newly engaged Chris Fowler hosts with analysts Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit. (Fowler recently got engaged to BodyShaping star Jennifer Dempster.) This week's show includes Steve Cyphers' profile of Jerry Sandusky, Paterno's defensive coordinator for 32 years who is retiring after this season, and Shelley Smith's look at Arizona running back Trung Candidate. Next week, the GameDay crew will be at Michigan Stadium, site of that day's Notre Dame-Michigan game. CNN/SI's Paul Crane also will be in Happy Valley this weekend and will examine Joe Pa on CNN's College Football Preview at 11:30 a.m. Saturday. In the piece, Paterno discusses the hype surrounding his Lions this year, "Publicity is like poison. It won't hurt you unless you swallow it." CNN/SI's Ivan Maisel will be at the Meadowlands in New Jersey for the Kickoff Classic, which is where Miami and Ohio State will play Sunday.
ABC, besides the changes in the broadcasting booth, also added former Auburn coach Terry Bowden to the studio with host John Saunders. Bowden replaces Todd Blackledge, who moved to CBS to be the No. 1 game analyst with play-by-play voice Sean McDouough. Blackledge replaces Terry Donahue, who is now an executive with the 49ers. Also at CBS, former running back Spencer Tillman will line up alongside host Tim Brando in the network's college football studio. Tillman replaces Craig James, now on The NFL Today, and Lou Holtz, who is the new head coach at South Carolina. ESPN's Thursday night season starts 8 p.m. Thursday with Oregon at Michigan State. Studio analysts Corso and Herbstreit will now join Mike Tirico in the booth on those Thursday night games. Mike Gottfried, who had shared Thursday analyst duties with Blackledge, and Rod Gilmore will appear in the studio with Fowler on The Weekend Kickoff Show before each week's game. ESPN/ESPN2 also will add a midnight Residence Inn College GameNight, which premieres Sept. 4. The program, which will last about 60 minutes, will be seen generally on ESPN2 through Oct. 17 and on ESPN from Oct. 24. Brian Kenny will host the show, which will resemble ESPN's NFL PrimeTime, with analyst Gilmore. No major changes were made to Fox Sports Net's coverage. Steve Physioc & Tom Ramsey and Barry Tompkins & David Norrie return in the booth, while Fox Sports News anchor Kevin Frazier and NFL Hall of Famer Kellen Winslow stay in the studio. Finally, Dick Enberg and Pat Haden return as the announcers on NBC's Notre Dame telecasts, starting Saturday with Kansas in South Bend, Ind., at 3:30 p.m. ET. For more details and a complete list of televised sporting events for this weekend, check out ArmchairQB.com's Today's Lineup. |
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