Super distancing: CBS keeping regular-season protocols
Jim Nantz and Tony Romo were inseparable when CBS broadcast the Super Bowl two years ago. Next week, they won’t see each other until they are in the broadcast booth a couple hours before kickoff.
“For me, this is going to be very much like what we did during the regular season, but it’s completely different from what I have experienced in past Super Bowls,” said Nantz, who will be calling his seventh Super Bowl.
Two years ago in Atlanta, Nantz and Romo arrived on Monday of Super Bowl week and had a busy schedule of watching practices, meeting with players and coaches, doing interviews, production meetings and various dinners. That won’t be the case this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Keeping announcers separated until game day has been CBS’ protocol this season. With many of the ancillary events surrounding Super Bowl week either canceled or happing virtually — along with the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers remaining at their own complexes to practice — the week is nearly structured like their first meeting on Nov. 29.
Nantz and Romo will do Zoom calls with the Chiefs and Buccaneers on Wednesday and Thursday before flying to Tampa. Nantz will head to Raymond James Stadium on Friday when the league does a rehearsal for the presentation of the Vince Lombardi Trophy, but that will be the only time he won’t be in his hotel room until the game.
Nantz is calling CBS’ first golf tournament of the year this weekend, but is doing it remotely from his home at Pebble Beach instead of from the 18th green at Torrey Pines in San Diego. Sir Nick Faldo said jokingly at the beginning of Saturday’s broadcast that Nantz was receiving more protection than what Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes would get during the game.
“With Tampa Bay being at home and with Kansas City arriving on Saturday there’s not a need for us to be just hanging out a room in Florida,” Nantz said.
The announcers aren’t the only ones not arriving until late in the week. “Super Bowl Today” pregame host James Brown and CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus won’t get there until Thursday, while sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson will arrive Friday.
McManus is usually in the production truck during the game with executive producer Harold Bryant, coordinating producer Jim Rikhoff and lead director Mike Arnold, but he will be in a separate space with television monitors and a line to communicate with Bryant.
McManus usually tries to meet with everyone associated with the broadcast as well as NFL owners and sponsors during the week, but that will happen virtually instead of in person.
“It’s definitely scaled back. It’s not social in any way which is fine,” he said. “But we believe that we should practice the exact procedures and the exact protocols that we’ve been asking everybody to do for an entire NFL season. It will be different, but if we get a close game it will all be worth it. And if we produce the kind of show that I know we’re going to, it will be a very satisfying trip for me.”