Fox Sports Media Group yesterday officially named Gus Johnson its lead announcer for college football. Johnson will team with analyst Charles Davis to call Big 12, Conference USA and Pac-12 games on FX, as well as a pair of games for the Big Ten Network, one of Fox' two conference championship games and the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic. Johnson and Davis in '12 also will call Fox' regular-season broadcast schedule. Johnson will continue to be the lead men's basketball announcer on the Big Ten Network, will call Fox' Pac-12 men's basketball tournament games in '13 and will work select NFL broadcasts following the college football season this year (Fox). FSMG Exec Producer, co-President & co-COO Eric Shanks said that Johnson and Davis "will do about 15 college football games during the regular season" (L.A. TIMES, 5/11). In Houston, David Barron wrote given the "amount of money that Fox is dropping with the Pac-12 and its relationship with the Big Ten, I presume that we will see and hear Johnson and Davis primarily" work games involving those conferences and "less so on Big 12 games" (CHRON.com, 5/10).
END OF THE MADNESS? Johnson said, "I don't know if it's necessarily a better fit. It's a new opportunity and a bigger stage for me -- getting to be a lead play-by-play guy for a network like Fox." Johnson added he "lost a lot of sleep over" leaving CBS' NCAA basketball tournament coverage. But Shanks said that Johnson "might not have worked his last CBS broadcast." CBS "has used announcers moon-lighting from other networks" during its tournament coverage (Michael Hiestand, USA TODAY, 5/11).
