CBS, NBC make final preparation for first Big Ten season as major changes await

INDIANAPOLIS — It’s been 17 years since Gary Danielson called a Big Ten football game.

Before he became one of the voices of SEC football on CBS, Danielson worked for ESPN and ABC alongside Brent Musberger. Since 2006, fans have heard his voice alongside Verne Lundquist and, more recently, Brad Nessler during the biggest games of the week.

This year, CBS will start its transition to become one of the exclusive homes of Big Ten football as part of a record-setting media rights deal. For Danielson, a former Purdue quarterback, it’s extra special considering where he’s at in his broadcasting career.

“I guess the word I’d use is an honor,” Danielson said at Big Ten Media Days. “To finish off my career … this is my 34th year. To be able to do another year, that shows CBS doesn’t just hand the mic to anybody. They’ve got an important product that they’ve allowed me to do their kickoff season … means a lot to me.”

Under the new Big Ten media agreement, three networks — FOX, CBS and NBC — will split the conference schedule each Saturday. FOX will have the noon ET game, CBS draws the 3:30 p.m. ET matchup and NBC closing out the day at 7:30 p.m. ET.

CBS won’t have a full share right away, though. It still has a contract with the SEC through the end of the 2023 season, which means the network will air both SEC and Big Ten games this year. It also means there will be a transition period of sorts.

However, according to CBS executive vice president of programming Dan Weinberg, the network will get a bit of a head start because of the way the SEC on CBS schedule works out.

“That [SEC] deal’s been a great deal for both sides for a long time,” Weinberg told On3. “We’ve been very good for the SEC and the SEC has been very good for CBS. And that’s the mark of any good partnership over the long haul. So we’re going to take that partnership out on a high note. We know we’re going to have big SEC games this year and we know what the windows are going to be in our schedule.

“Now, that having been said, side by side, we’ve worked with the league to create an exciting package of Big Ten games for sort of this transition with the year between the last year of our SEC deal and the first year of our Big Ten deal. Our week-to-week every week, 3:30 beachhead window, Big Ten football will start in 2024. For 2023, we’ve successfully put a bunch of games in windows that were not occupied by the SEC at this point, so our SEC deal just factually starts the third week of the season, as has been the case for a lot of years. So the first two weeks of the season gave us an opportunity to do some Big Ten football.”

NBC is blending old and new faces as part of its Big Ten coverage

When fans turn to NBC this year, they’ll likely hear a familiar voice in the broadcast booth. Todd Blackledge will do color commentary on the prime-time broadcasts alongside Noah Eagle and Kathryn Tappen.

Blackledge, the former Penn State quarterback, most recently worked at ESPN as a color analyst alongside Sean McDonough. He has called quite a few Big Ten games over the years, but the league will now be his main focus at NBC.

It’s a bit of a full-circle moment for Blackledge, who grew up in Big Ten Country and said he’s ready to return to his roots.

“I was very happy where I was at ESPN,” Blackledge said. “I worked with Sean McDonough, I worked with Brad Nessler for a bunch of years before that. I had a good run there. But this was just a great opportunity at this point in my career and too good to say no to. To have a chance to kind of focus on the Big Ten, I’m a Midwestern guy. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina now, but my roots are Ohio, my roots are the Midwest. This’ll be fun to kind of do that.”

In addition to bringing Blackledge aboard for the game broadcast, NBC also took a step to make sure one of the Big Ten’s newest members will be represented on its broadcasts. Former USC quarterback Matt Cassel is on board, joining the network for its B1G College Countdown pregame show one year before the Trojans join the conference along with UCLA.

That will give Cassel a front-row seat to watching his alma mater transition to its new home — and he’s ready to see how it goes.

“I’m really excited about it,” Cassel told On3. “Not just covering the Big Ten this year and obviously, the tradition that they have and the heritage. But now, you bring two great schools with USC and UCLA into the fold from a conference that I grew up in in the Pac-10, Pac-12.

“And also, where they’re at as schools with Lincoln Riley in charge at USC, you’ve got Chip Kelly at UCLA, who I think is going in the right direction. … The matchups are going to be interesting. You’re going to be able to bring the West Coast to the Midwest and vice versa and they’re going to get the exposure both nationally and also, for the West Coast, to be going up against such prominent schools is going to be outstanding to watch. I’m really excited about the opportunity to watch this transition unfold.”

Where do USC and UCLA fit into all this?

Perhaps the biggest X-Factor in the Big Ten deal is the additions of USC and UCLA. That will take the conference to 16 teams — and it will happen right as the league fully takes over CBS’ 3:30 p.m. ET time slot.

Weinberg noted what adding two Los Angeles-based schools will do for exposure by giving the Big Ten a presence in the three top media markets. But the other reason their additions are so interesting is what it does to the standings. The Big Ten is doing away with divisions next year as part of its Flex Protect Plus scheduling model. That could create more depth in the standings and, as a result, make for more impactful games before the College Football Playoff as it also moves to 12 teams in 2024.

With such passionate fan bases around the league, Weinberg said that adds to the anticipation for the new deal to fully kick in.

“Here’s what I would say. You’re talking about … just in terms of the depth of the league itself right now with the iconic institutions, all the history, the rivalries, the fan base, the alumni base. All of that. That goes up exponentially when you get schools like USC and UCLA being added to the conference,” Weinberg said. “It brings a little bit of the West Coast into the fold with the LA market. But of course, just like the existing schools in the conference that have this wide fan base, so does USC, so does UCLA. They have fans all over the country. So I think that’s, obviously, a really important piece.

“The second piece is it creates more depth than already exists. And we know that there’s already a tremendous amount of depth in this conference. More depth is good in terms of having meaningful, impactful games, you know, three, four or five deep every single week of the season. And so, I think that’s exciting to us as well.”

As realignment dominoes continue to fall — word came out about Colorado’s apparent plans to return to the Big 12 shortly after the first round of Big Ten Media Days press conferences wrapped — Cassel said the Big Ten has done enough to stay toward the top of the college football world.

Between the two West Coast additions and the record media deal, he thinks the league will be relevant for a long, long time.

“I think it brings them to an elite status,” Cassel said. “You have the SEC, who’s obviously bringing in Texas and Oklahoma. But then, you look at the counter by the Big Ten, bringing in two great schools from the West Coast with USC and UCLA and it really becomes the two primary conferences in all of college football. You look at that, and when you look at it from that aspect, you go, ‘Wow, they’ve really put themselves on the map.’

“Then also, the television contracts and everything that that entails in terms of monetary value for the conferences, there’s tremendous value in that. And also, moving forward, the Big Ten’s going to be in a good situation for a long period of time to come.”