There is no sound that sets college football apart from its pro equivalent more than the marching band. For Charles Davis, the resounding ‘boom’ of the bass drum will simultaneously mark a new beginning in a familiar setting as he returns to college football broadcasts for the first time in more than a decade.
Davis is succeeding Gary Danielson as the lead college football analyst for CBS Sports, making his debut in the role on Boise State-Oregon this Saturday. He will be working alongside returning play-by-play announcer Brad Nessler and sideline reporter Jenny Dell.
When CBS Sports chose Davis to fill the role, he knew that there would be some catching up to do ahead of the opening call. Davis, who previously worked for TBS and Fox Sports on its college football coverage, estimates that he has not called a “true college football game” since 2014, and he expects to feel the usual butterflies heading into the Week 1 matchup.
“You hear the whistle of the drum major, and all that begins,” Davis said. “When I hear that at Autzen Stadium, yeah, that’s when I’ll know I’m back in the college football world, and I think my excitement will take over in a big way. So if I can get through the open without gassing out with Brad — if I just get through the open and don’t collapse right on screen, I think after that I’ll be okay.”
Moving into the analyst chair
CBS Sports announced last March that Danielson would work his final year in the lead college football booth and concurrently named Davis to be his successor, a sequence that generally does not take place on the same day in the sports media business. The company also shifted its NFL broadcasting teams last year, moving Davis to a three-person pairing with Andrew Catalon and Tiki Barber after he had called games with Ian Eagle for the previous five years.
With knowledge of his future assignment last season, Davis was able to observe and read more about college football throughout the year, although he always maintained expertise on the subject matter in covering the NFL Draft. Davis did not end up shadowing Danielson to prepare for the role, although he believes the opportunity could have been available.
“If I’m around, we know why I’m there, right?,” Davis posited. “I’m there to shadow to see how they do things and all of that, but let’s be honest about it. If I’m around, people aren’t going to look at it that way, and I did not want that to happen for Gary Danielson. He deserved nothing but my respect and his ability to have his last season just for him.”
Dell said that she has never received more phone calls about one person than she did regarding Davis when he was announced as the future college football analyst at CBS, citing “glowing reviews” about him from her friends in the business. While she was thankful that the team had the year to celebrate Danielson and his legacy on the air, she is also glad that the question of who would replace him in the booth did not loom.
“The fact that Charles had a year to really sit in it and watch our broadcasts and watch more college football and get that experience, I think that was huge,” Dell said. “The moment that we found out that it was Charles, I made sure to reach out to him, and we had a great conversation, and since, we’ve had multiple long-form conversations of just what college football looks like because it’s been so long that he’s been in the NFL, he had a lot of questions about how things run and how the operation works.”
Nessler worked with Danielson for the last nine seasons at CBS Sports, primarily broadcasting SEC football games before the network lost those rights following the 2023 campaign. Since that time, the Big Ten has been the primary focus for the lead broadcasting team, culminating in the conference’s championship game two years ago.
Nessler spoke with Davis every few weeks during the last college football season, and while they have been friends for many years, the duo has not practiced commentating together heading into the opening match.
“We’ll probably know by halftime,” Nessler said. “We’ll look at each other and go, ‘Okay, this is working really well,’ or, ‘Okay, we got things to work on,’ but yeah, we’re wily, old veterans. They didn’t put us in a room and say, ‘Go do a practice game,’ because I would have said, ‘No, I don’t want to do that,’ so let’s just get started, and we’ll get rolling Week 1.”
Adapting to broadcast, production changes
Nessler and Davis had discussed the prospect of calling games together in previous years despite being at different networks. Nessler is highly regarded as a broadcast professional, but his daughter called Davis “the nicest guy I’ve met in this business,” something he affirms to be “a pretty good recommendation.”
In the end, he believes Davis is the best person to work with him moving forward. It will be a transition without Danielson though, with whom he also worked at ESPN and ABC Sports for more than seven years before reconvening at CBS Sports.
“Being with somebody as long as I was with Gary — 17 years over two different stints — obviously I’m going to miss him, and the things that we had, I don’t know if I can replicate with Charles,” Nessler said. “I hope I can. It’s going to have to be in a shorter order of time because I’m not going to have 17 years with Charles, but Gary and I could finish each other’s sentences, and it got to the point where we’d almost get mad at each other because, ‘You just finished my sentence.’ We were like an old married couple, and so that takes time.”
Aside from Danielson working his final season with the lead broadcast team, last year turned out to be the final season with the producer-director duo of Craig Silver and Steve Milton, meaning that Danielson and Dell are the only returning members among the five of them. Steve McKee will serve as the new producer for the games this year with director Andy Freedman, both of whom have worked on various CBS Sports properties over the years. McKee worked with Davis last year and also previously filled in for Silver.
“I’m relatively used to his style,” Nessler said. “He came through kind of the Craig Silver school of doing it, so I know they do things pretty similar. We worked the March Madness games together, and so did Andy with me, so I know Andy’s approach to if I need something, I need a certain shot, it’s there immediately.”
From coaching to commentating
Former LSU head coach Brian Kelly was another new addition to the CBS Sports talent roster this offseason, working as a game and studio analyst on college football coverage. Kelly made his debut in the broadcasting booth last weekend alongside play-by-play announcer Rich Waltz and analyst Adam Breneman as North Dakota State faced Jacksonville State.
“In the number of games that I’ve watched, I’ve never gone away and said, ‘Wow, that color commentator didn’t say enough,'” Kelly said. “So I go into it with a sense of, ‘I’m just not going to over-communicate. I’m going to let you watch the game,’ and then when I have some salient points from a coaching perspective, I think I’ll be able to jump in.”
Throughout portions of four seasons coaching the LSU Tigers, he led the team to a 34-14 record and had several athletes reach the NFL, including QB Jayden Daniels, WR Malik Nabers and OT Will Campbell. Some coaches who make the transition to broadcasting do not end up sticking with it, instead opting to return to the sidelines, and Kelly is taking his new career on a month-by-month basis rather than committing for years to come.
“Whatever I’ve done in my life as a coach, I’ve always focused on the present,” Kelly said. “I don’t mind being reminded about the past, and I don’t like to mortgage my future, so I really stay in the present, and for right now, I’m lucky that I’m working for CBS, and CBS is going to get the best I can give them.”
Kelly has spoken to media members regularly in press conferences and interviews, but he is now going to be on the other side of the microphone covering the sport.
“I think most of my experiences have been really good ones with the media,” Kelly said. “There’s always a couple of ‘Gotchas’ out there that are going to be that way, but I think being consistent so they know exactly where I’m coming from and that I’ve done my work, I’ve done my preparation. I think when I look back on the times that I would sit down with anybody from CBS to ESPN to Fox to whoever it was, ‘Is this person prepared?'”
Counting down to 2028
CBS Sports holds rights to the Big Ten Football Championship Game in 2028, giving the lead broadcast team approximately three seasons to build rapport and prepare for the contest. Nessler and Dell called the 2024 iteration of the game, while Davis broadcast the first four versions of the contest beginning in 2011. The full Big Ten media rights deal expires following the 2029-30 athletic season.
“I just think it’s the week to week getting better at my craft, week to week getting better as a partner and a teammate with Gary and Jenny, and all of us coming together because we have a little bit of a new production team and all, so all of that has to knit itself together,” Davis said. “I don’t think that we’re going to peak in ’28 if that makes any sense — like, ‘Hey, by ’28!’ We hope to be at a higher level much quicker.”
“I want a seamless approach for all three of us,” Nessler added. “I like Jenny being as big a part of the game, and it can’t be necessarily, but I want her to be as big a part as Charles and I. And my job’s to make those guys look good and make the game sound good, and everything else will take care of itself.”
Davis credited his NFL assignments for strengthening his work ethic and preparation, but in an era of analysts working at both levels, the college game will be his exclusive focus.
“I’m not worried about anything else now,” Davis said. “I need to do the best job possible for CBS college football, Big Ten college football on CBS with this crew I’m with now. Nothing else matters.”
To achieve that goal, Davis is cognizant of the shoes he needs to fill. “What Gary leaves behind is a career of excellence built by the work that goes along with it to get to that stage,” Davis said. “He already knew the game, he stayed up on what the game was about; he had an easy rapport, an affability that came off of him in the booth; he had his opinions, but he didn’t try and convince you he was a know-it-all. ‘Hey, this is how I think it’s going to go,’ and more times than not, he was correct. But there was just a professionalism, there was a class to him, and I hope that I can follow in his footsteps and be along those lines.”
