One of my first columns for Barrett Sports Media questioned whether NBC Sports had a college football announcer problem after it secured a seven-year rights deal with the Big Ten. Five months later, we have our answer, and it’s a resounding no.
Last week, a report came out that claimed NBC would partner up-and-coming play-by-play man Noah Eagle with longtime ESPN analyst Todd Blackledge. I believe the newly created booth is nearly a best case scenario as NBC expands its college football coverage.
I haven’t been shy in my admiration of Eagle. He isn’t a great young broadcaster, he’s a great broadcaster. His handle of a broadcast, his understanding of pivotal moments, and the honing of his craft is evident. He has quickly risen through the ranks — with plenty of charges of nepotism — but I truly believe his quick ascent has been earned and not given.
Meanwhile, Blackledge departing ESPN to move to NBC will make the third network he’ll work at as a college football game analyst, and the second where he’ll be the lead analyst. Blackledge is as experienced of an analyst NBC could have hoped for, but it solves a long problem the peacock network has experienced with its college football broadcasts.
Todd Blackledge knows the Big Ten. Even though Penn State wasn’t a member of the conference as he played his storied collegiate career, Blackledge — an Ohio native — has decades of experience announcing conference games.
For years, NBC has brought analysts with no discernible ties to Notre Dame to the university’s nationwide broadcasts. It — frankly — was and is a head scratcher. There are no charges of impartiality in the broadcast booth. NBC is the home of Notre Dame football. You can’t pretend the broadcast crew needs to call the game down the middle as the Fighting Irish take on whoever is on the schedule, because the majority of the audience is watching because they’re Notre Dame fans. It’s as close to a local radio broadcast as you’ll find in network television, and yet, NBC never capitalized on that captive audience with analysts that were familiar to its fan base.
It completely avoided that — valid — criticism with Blackledge. He is a familiar voice and name to Big Ten football fans, and his partnership with Eagle, in my estimation, will be widely viewed as a fantastic crew by fans of the collegiate heartland when the network begins broadcasting the conference in 2023.
The next question — however — is how long will Eagle work as the primary play-by-play announcer for the Big Ten on NBC franchise before someone tries to gobble him up for a larger, more high-profile assignment.
As a fan of a Big Ten team, I had real question marks about who the network would feature in its first broadcast booth. Those questions no longer persist. NBC did a phenomenal job bringing together the best broadcast crew it could assemble.
On the flip side, Notre Dame fans may have questions why the network’s best broadcast crew is scheduled for primetime games of a newfound fling while it’s saddled with a second rate partnership of Jac Collinsworth and Jason Garrett, but that’s another story for another day.
Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing bi-weekly industry features and a weekly column. He has previously served as Program Director and Afternoon Co-Host on 93.1 The Fan in Lima, OH, and is the radio play-by-play voice of Northern Michigan University hockey. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
