College football broadcast rankings: Did ABC, NBC, ESPN call it best in Week 1?

By / / Sports / 8 minutes of reading


College football Saturdays are an exercise in information overload. The amount of simultaneous action and the lack of regimented kickoff windows mean rarely is everyone watching the same thing.

One result of all that chaos: College fans form very, very strong opinions about the television networks and broadcasters charged with bringing them the action. Announcers who strike the right tone in big moments can become part of a program’s lore; others, with just a hint of bias in their delivery, can color a fan base’s opinion of the person on the mic for the rest of their career.

Most importantly, the competition for college football broadcast supremacy has never been more fascinating, as the influence of television shapes — if not dictates — every major realignment move.

Thus I set out to rank Week 1’s best and most notable broadcasts, in an attempt to assess which crews are doing right by their audiences in bringing this unique season to life. Two disclaimers:

  • No, I did not watch the complete TV copy of every national broadcast to inform these evaluations. This exercise is for channel-flippers, YouTubeTV multiviewers and casual fans who may only choose one game to watch with the sound on.
  • Yes, I have pre-existing preferences for certain play-by-play teams and networks that you may learn more about below. I will try to set those aside and hold everyone to the same high standard.

1a. ABC Saturday prime time (Notre Dame 23, Texas A&M 13; Chris Fowler play-by-play, Kirk Herbstreit analyst)

ESPN’s premier team got the benefit of an electric Kyle Field atmosphere but had to overcome the challenge of a game that quickly turned into a defense-heavy grappling match. Chris Fowler’s ability to ratchet up his voice’s volume and excitement in exact alignment with the game’s biggest plays has set him apart from his peers for years. That skill got a big test when Notre Dame broke off its two long touchdown runs on a night with limited offensive highlights. I find his smooth rapport with Kirk Herbstreit to have a calming effect during games in raucous environments, and that easy resting volume helps them remain entertaining for the rest of the night when there aren’t highlight-reel plays to yell about.

Meanwhile, sideline reporter Holly Rowe shined in one of the best field reports I saw all weekend, holding a Notre Dame backup quarterback’s helmet to her ear to bring the audience inside how the new coach-to-player communication technology works. Several announcers mentioned the new tech allowed under NCAA rules this weekend, but no one gave a better simulation of how it actually changes the game.

1b. ESPN/ABC Sunday prime time (USC 27, LSU 20; Rece Davis play-by-play, Kirk Herbstreit analyst)

Herbstreit and Rowe turned in back-to-back great nights, although an unfortunately-timed sideline interview with former LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels was interrupted by one of LSU’s longest offensive gains of the night. This game had too much late drama to do anything but an excellent job.

2. SEC Network early (Vanderbilt 34, Virginia Tech 27; Roy Philpott play-by-play, Sam Acho analysis)

The networks can strategize all they want, but you never really know which broadcast crew will end up with the game of the day. And during an early window when Georgia throttled Clemson and Penn State–West Virginia was stalled by a lengthy severe weather delay, all eyes turned to Nashville, where Vanderbilt jumped on two-touchdown favorite Virginia Tech, gave away a 17-point lead and won in overtime anyway.

Roy Philpott has long been an underrated member of ESPN’s depth chart. He was well aware of his crew’s good fortune on this particular afternoon and up to the task, working seamlessly with Sam Acho in the former Texas linebacker’s first game moving from a studio show chair to analyst. The broadcast’s lone memorable hiccup was the main camera completely losing the ball on Virginia Tech’s game-tying touchdown pass.

3. CBS mid-afternoon (Ohio State 52, Akron 6; Brad Nessler play-by-play, Gary Danielson analysis)

I was not ready to accept the complete transfer of the CBS mid-afternoon showcase broadcast from the SEC to the Big Ten. To my surprise, everything felt … natural. I find Gary Danielson extremely engaging and insightful (far from a consensus opinion, I’m told), with an eye for detail on things like interior offensive line play that he always sounds excited to share. He and Brad Nessler showed up well-prepared for a game many neutral observers expected to turn off after two drives. Instead, it took a whole half for Ohio State to pull away, gifting Nessler and Danielson with a little less garbage time than expected, and they hardly seemed bored with the short straw of a matchup they drew this week.

My lingering question: Will this broadcast feel “big” enough for later-season Big Ten showdowns? The conference’s other two major network partners have more established big-game packaging, with Fox’s Big Noon Saturday and NBC’s pedigree in prime-time football. This was a rock-solid Week 1, but I’d like to see something slightly beyond copying and pasting the SEC mid-afternoon packaging as the stakes of the Big Ten rise.

4. Fox Big Noon Saturday (Penn State 34, West Virginia 12; Gus Johnson play-by-play, Joel Klatt analysis)

This team has never been my personal cup of tea — a little too loud for how early it is in the day, with the annual exceptions of Michigan-Ohio State and sometimes Oklahoma-Texas — but Gus Johnson and Joel Klatt did an admirable job playing through the whistle on a telecast that stretched deep into the second window of games thanks to bad weather in Morgantown.

Johnson seems to turn the hyperbolic volume down to a reasonable level when calling games in which Michigan and Ohio State are not involved. Deep in the fourth quarter, the two shared a funny exchange about the “sneaky athletic” and “coach on the field” cliches when talking about Penn State quarterback Drew Allar. Maybe this is Week 1 optimism talking, but I’m excited to see what they do at Michigan-Texas next week.

This duo did provide my biggest double-take of the day: As play resumed after the delay and Klatt mentioned the annoyance of being crammed into a visitors locker room, Johnson asked Klatt whether he had played at West Virginia while at Colorado. Klatt deftly explained that West Virginia was not yet in the Big 12 in 2005, his final season as a Buffaloes quarterback. (West Virginia joined in 2012, the year after Colorado left for the Pac-12.)

5. ABC early (Georgia 34, Clemson 3; Sean McDonough play-by-play, Greg McElroy analysis)

Big hockey fan talking here: Sean McDonough is one of the best multi-sport play-by-play voices currently working. He and Greg McElroy got a dud this time around, but McDonough didn’t help the cause by seeming to react slowly to the game’s two most viral highlights: a one-handed catch by Clemson tight end Jake Briningstool and an acrobatic interception by Georgia star safety Malaki Starks. McElroy saved his partner both times with an appropriately enthusiastic follow-up gushing about the play. (In McDonough’s defense, both catches were so good it was worth waiting an extra beat to make sure they were legal.)

6. NBC prime time (Michigan 30, Fresno State 10; Noah Eagle play-by-play, Todd Blackledge analysis)

No significant demerits or highlights from this performance, and this is a team I’ll buy stock in long-term as NBC gets more Big Ten reps. Eagle did make me laugh when he said a Fresno State player was going to be “expunged from this game” after a targeting call.

7. ABC afternoon (Miami 41, Florida 17; Joe Tessitore play-by-play, Jesse Palmer analysis)

When ESPN took full control of the SEC’s broadcast rights, it promised an “unmistakably SEC” feel for the 3:30 p.m. ET game that the conference’s fans had come to cherish. I did not get this feel from Saturday’s effort in The Swamp. With the exception of the new big-games-only scorebug (of which I’m an early fan), that could have been any medium-sized ESPN/ABC game instead of The Game Of The Day.

ESPN’s revamped theme music for its biggest matchups is no match for The Song. And Joe Tessitore’s propensity to do about 15 percent too much with the biggest calls of the game is enough to be jarring for those of us who still set the impossibly high standard of “Verne Lundquist or nobody” for the SEC’s biggest game.

Other observations

Thursday night highlight

Fox analyst Brock Huard struggled to hold back his emotions as he eloquently discussed what goes through a quarterback mom’s mind as North Carolina quarterback Max Johnson was carted off with a season-ending injury while his parents looked on from the stands.

Thursday night lowlight

Not only did ESPN play-by-play man Mark Jones’ prerecorded “Ode To The Big 12” video essay call into question whether the very invention of the thesaurus was a mistake, it ran well into the start of a North Dakota State offensive drive.

Ah, college football musings

During an interminable weather delay of Kentucky–Southern Miss on SEC Network, Jordan Rodgers and Cole Cubelic debated their approaches to eating dairy before games during their playing days. Moments later, during the final minutes of Texas Tech-Abilene Christian on ESPN+, analyst Dave Steckel refreshingly admitted, “I don’t know the rule right now, to be honest with you,” during the replay of a key roughing the passer penalty. Try finding those moments of unfiltered grace during an NFL broadcast.

No one, and I mean no one, calls a punt like Eric Collins

(Top photo of Chris Fowler (left) and Notre Dame Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman: Maria Lysaker / USA Today)





Source link

About The Author

Avatar of Fannie Hogan
Fannie Hogan is a writer and editor who covers lifestyle, books, sports, education, and tech. She's always loved to write—from the time she was a little girl writing stories about talking animals to the day she got her first job as an editor at a lifestyle magazine. Her hobbies include long walks on the beach, running, and taking breaks from work to read a good book.

Start typing and press enter to search

Scroll to Top