As they do every summer around this time, ESPN has released its broadcast booth pairings for the upcoming college football season.
Anyone who knows me knows in another life hopefully I can be a TV critic, specifically one that covers the whos and whats of sports on television. This is assuming two things…A) there are newspapers still around to land such a job or B) if you want to pony up some coin, I’ll start a blog/website/ramble doing it now.
Anyways, among the notable changes.
Brad Nessler has been moved over to ESPN’s Saturday night primetime booth with Todd Blackledge, these of course are the “B” primetime games that kickoff at 7:45 p.m. But as a Nessler apologist and huge fan (Ask colleague Mike Gross about the trip to Ann Arbor two years ago and the flight out of Iowa last year for more details) I am happy to see he is in primetime and we all know as long as Saturday Night Football remains on the air, he is the next in line once Brent Musberger retires (hopefully never?). Erin Andrews will act as sideline reporter for these games.
Mike Patrick, who occupied the spot Nessler is moving over to, will move over to ABC’s afternoon broadcasts with Craig James and Heather Cox.
James will stay on Thursday night ESPN games with Chris Fowler and Jesse Palmer (good trio).
Dave Pasch, Bob Greise and Chris Spielman will be the other top ABC
Brent Musberger and Kirk Herbstreit are back to call Saturday Night Football on ABC this season/The Sports Hernia
afternoon team. Pasch is very, very underrated. Very underrated. Extremely underrated.
The odd man out (thankfully) is Paul Maguire.
That’s because Sean McDonough and newly acquired Matt Millen will also call games on ABC. That, by all accounts, is an awesome pairing. Matt Millen the GM/NFL Executive, bad. Matt Millen the color analyst, very, very good.
Brock Huard and Eric Collins will call the new SEC package on ESPNU on Saturday nights.
Of course, Musberger, Kirk Herbstreit and Lisa Salters stay in place as the wildly popular trio on ABC’s Saturday Night Football.
ABC has both the Rose Bowl and BCS title game (at the Rose Bowl) this season so Herbie and Brent get to call both.
Erin Andrews, by the way, was drilled (mind.out.of.gutter.NOW) last night during the Mets/Dodgers game on ESPN. She took a line drive off the chin, but is OK.
LIFT FOR LIFE SET
The annual and popular Lift For Life will take place tomorrow at Holuba Hall. for the teams competing, check out FightOnState, as Mark Brennan does a great job tracking all of the results and who wins, etc, during the event.
Players will be available to the media, I’ll have some reaction here sometime tomorrow. Daryll Clark, however, will not be available as he is not competing in the event this year.
I’ll likely tweet some of the activity as well. You can follow those updates over on the Twitter account that coincides with this here blog. If you aren’t a follower, for constant updates and some social commentary, do so.
ON A TOTALLY UNRELATED NOTE…
Did anyone catch Michael Jackson’s dermatologist on Larry King Live last night? And if so did anyone understand anything the marble mouthed weirdo said?
Jackson, according to multiple reports, is still dead by the way.
Email: Ethomas626@yahoo.com | Twitter: Betweenthelions
1 Comment
July 9, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Interesting insights on the booth pairings. Poor Erin–ouch…