Life changed for CBS Sports on January 3, 2007, and they likely didn’t even realize to what degree. That was the day Nick Saban left the Miami Dolphins to become head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide. The former head coach at LSU, a program he had resurrected, was now leading a team in the same division, a program that needed a resurrection.
What followed was a 17-year run mostly filled with incredible regular season battles between the Tide and Tigers, all but one of those games CBS brought to the nation. Aside from the 2021 game in Baton Rouge — an overtime thriller on ESPN — CBS Sports has shown every Alabama-LSU game of the Nick Saban era.
That run came to a close Saturday night in Tuscaloosa as Alabama dominated in the second half to outlast the Bayou Bengals 42-28. It was the 11th primetime CBS telecast of an Alabama-LSU game, no SEC rivalry has been given a similar treatment under the current SEC on CBS run.
In fact, the only regular season games that have garnered as much CBS attention as Alabama-LSU are Tennessee-Florida and the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party, Florida versus Georgia. The annual Gators-Vols tilt was a very early season SEC East elimination game and, by extension, a national championship elimination game. CBS showed that game for the first 16 consecutive years of thier contract with the SEC. The Cocktail party has been a standard 2:30 CBS kick since the conference games returned to CBS Sports in 1996.
It is Alabama-LSU, though, that has been the CBS ratings winner over the years, none more than the 2011 “Game of the Century”, a 9-6 LSU win in Tuscaloosa that drew more than 20 million viewers the night of November 5th.
In fact, that game remains an anomaly. CBS is granted one primetime game per season, they build in a doubleheader with the first game in their standard 3:30 ET/2:30 CT window and the second game airing just after that in their primetime window.
The problem in 2011 was that CBS Sports had played that card the week of October 1st for Alabama at Florida. When November rolled around, Alabama was the top-ranked team in the nation and LSU was ranked second. CBS orchestrated a trade with ESPN to secure a second primetime window for that Alabama-LSU game.
All of that will be part of history now as the SEC moves away from CBS after the SEC Championship Game in December. It will end a run that dates back to 1996 between the national network and one of the premier leagues in college athletics.
If there were a relationship status between the SEC and CBS Sports, the official status would be “ It’s Complicated”. There has been some good for the SEC, a nationally televised game at a set time on an over-the-air network, with promotion during the Sunday NFL coverage. That is something no other conference has consistently enjoyed over the last 27 years.
The relationship wasn’t all roses, though, with frustrations about CBS inside the SEC offices and among officials at SEC schools. First, there was the rights fee, a paltry $55 million dollars for the first pick of the SEC slate each week.
The SEC always felt that CBS undervalued the product, made evident by the fact they will now pay more than $300 million annually to the Big Ten and not even have the first pick each week. CBS personnel choices also rankled some in the SEC, the primary analysts had no ties to the SEC at all.
When the network returned in 1996, Todd Blackledge was chosen as a game analyst. Blackledge is one of the best in the business but is a Penn State graduate.
Then, there is Gary Danielson. Danielson is as much of a lightning rod as exists in the SEC. You could go to every SEC fan base and the majority of their fans will swear to you Gary Danielson hates their team and loves Alabama and Georgia. Bama and Georgia fans would get a hearty laugh out of that and tell you Danielson would even pick Vanderbilt over them. Vanderbilt fans may not even know who Danielson is. What he is, is a Purdue grad who many have always viewed as an outsider in the SEC.
The primary bone of contention is that many in the SEC have felt CBS is less of a business partner and more of a groom in a shotgun wedding. It was like CBS needed to be convinced why they should remain married to the SEC when everyone around them thought they had the perfect marriage.
The real breaking point came in 2012 when Texas A&M and Missouri joined the league. ESPN stepped to the table upping their annual rights to reflect the 14 teams rather than 12. CBS refused to do so and, from that moment forward, the break-up was on.
The marriage is over and a month from now. The divorce will be final. Disney is paying a king’s ransom to show SEC games on ESPN and ABC. The SEC will keep the national stage, make more money, and have a true business partner.
For the SEC fans, they’ll get to find a whole new set of game analysts that hate their team and, regardless of that new villain of an analyst, not one of those fans will miss a play.
Ryan Brown is a columnist for Barrett Sports Media, and a co-host of the popular sports audio/video show ‘The Next Round’ formerly known as JOX Roundtable, which previously aired on WJOX in Birmingham. You can find him on Twitter @RyanBrownLive and follow his show @NextRoundLive.
