Arkansas defeated Kansas State in the Cotton Bowl last night 29-16 in a matchup of Top 10 teams.  The game wasn’t quite as exciting as some of the BCS games that have been played this season and the Friday night timeslot hurt the buzz for the game.  That, and let’s just say ESPN didn’t go out of their way to let you know there was a big bowl game being played on a rival network.  More than anything, with more than 30+ bowl games on the calendar and the national title game a couple days away, the nation is suffering from bowl fatigue at the moment.  I’ll be curious to see how the Cotton Bowl ratings stack up to the BCS games seeing as how it was on network TV while the BCS has moved to cable.

The other interesting aspect was the presence of one Gus Johnson and the Fox telecast.  Let’s see… Fox… college football… I wonder what it was about their broadcast that would cause CBSSports.com college football writer Bryan Fischer’s head to explode…

To the guy (gal?) at Fox that takes sick pleasure in trolling college football fans with band shots, congratulations, you’ve hit your marks once again.  As far as Gus goes, there weren’t too many opportunities for his trademark excitement, but we did get this Joe Adams punt return for a TD… 

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0M8sU8f_Aes?hd=1

And just like that, Gus Johnson’s first year doing college football at Fox is over.  What did you think about Gus’ first year at Fox?  Let us know by voting in the poll below:


 

I voted for #4.  I thought it was just an ok first season for Gus Johnson at Fox.  Fox just isn’t yet a college football powerhouse, so it’s going to seem like Gus is being woefully underused.  For most of the season, Gus was stuck doing mediocre games on FX.  Yea, we love Gus, but is he really going to make us watch Tulsa v Oklahoma on a Saturday night when LSU is playing West Virginia, or Ohio State is taking on Wisconsin, or we have other plans?  The Pac 12 & Big Ten title game double duty was a nice touch and provided a couple classic Gus moments… but if that and a Friday night bowl game is the big payoff, Fox needs to rethink how to get more out of their investment in Gus Johnson.

According to our announcing schedules, do you know how many NFL games Gus Johnson broadcasted this year?

ONE!

ONE NFL game!

And that was all the way back in Week 4 between 0-3 Kansas City and 0-3 Minnesota.  Yuck!

When Gus signed with Fox, we thought he would at least get a few games throughout the year, even though his primary assignment was to build the Fox college football brand.  Instead, we got plenty of Chris Myers and Tim Ryan or Sam Rosen and Chad Pennington.  (*sad trombone*)  Gus obviously worked the back to back for the conference title games, so why didn’t he make more appearances on Sundays?  Why not use Gus on more high profile NFL games to help build your college football brand?  Why not have Gus announce a big game here and there and say to NFL fans, this is the guy that’s leading our college football coverage!  For fans of Gus Johnson and the NFL to see his games go from seventeen down to one has to be a massive disappointment.  

Alas, it’s now onto Big Ten Network for Gus Johnson where have no fear, he will be announcing some college basketball games.  But unless there’s a David Beckham type loan deal in the cards, his basketball year will end way too early in March.

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