The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nessler expects comfortable fit in role at CBS
Network’s new voice of SEC taking over for Lundquist.
NEW YORK — In many ways, the only thing changing for Brad Nessler is the blazer he will be wearing in the booth.
Nessler is preparing for his first season as the voice of the SEC on CBS, filling the seat held for 17 years by friend Verne Lundquist and returning to the network where he first went national.
His “new” partner is Gary Danielson, with whom Nessler worked for seven years at ESPN and ABC. And Nessler has spent plenty of Saturdays in SEC country during a long career calling college football games.
No doubt Nessler is comfortable with his new gig. He hopes viewers will be as content with him as they were with his predecessor.
“You know you can’t be Uncle Verne, right?” Nessler said Tuesday at the CBS offices in Manhattan. “Maybe I’ll be Cousin Ness or something?”
Nessler’s first game will be TCU at Arkansas on Sept. 9.
The 61-year-old Nessler was a natural replacement for Lundquist, who is giving up the weekly grind of the SEC season but will still be part of CBS golf and NCAA Tournament coverage. Lundquist, 77, had become such a Saturday afternoon institution that even his occasional slip-ups were embraced by many fans as part of the charm of Uncle Verne.
Nessler understands viewers might not be quite so kind when he has an off game, but he’s not too concerned.
“One thing that helps is I’m not a Twitter guy. The social media doesn’t bother me because I don’t pay attention to it,” Nessler said.”
Nessler and Lundquist have a long friendship that goes back to when Nessler was a 26-year-old radio playby-play man for the Falcons in the 1980s and Lundquist was at the end of his tenure doing Dallas Cowboys games. It was Lundquist who touted Nessler to CBS executives. Nessler called his first college game — Pitt at Oklahoma — for CBS in 1990.
“If you told me to pick a guy who’s most like Verne’s style out there, I’d choose Brad even if I didn’t know him,” Danielson said. “He’s a minimalist as a broadcaster.”
A few years later Nessler moved to ESPN and was eventually paired with Danielson. The network broke up the two in the late 1990s and eventually Danielson landed at CBS. This will be his 12th season as the lead analyst on CBS’s SEC game of the week.
“I think it’ll be a little different,” Danielson said. “Brad will be a little more aggressive in seeking out information, but I think both styles are great.”
Nessler has called plenty of NFL and NBA games, along with college basketball, but he considers himself a college football guy. He said jumping back to CBS for this job was a pretty easy call.
“This is a time slot and a game that everybody watches,” Nessler said. “Where I was I was in a great position, but every week we would go ‘I wonder what CBS is going to choose?’ Because we would have the second choice of SEC games. Now, I don’t have to worry about that.”
Nessler also gets to check a couple boxes on his playby-play wish list that are still open. He has never announced a Florida-Georgia game, the annual rivalry played in Jacksonville and nicknamed the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. Nessler will also call the Army-Navy game for the first time.