Let’s take a 5 minute break from arguing about the college football playoff rankings by shifting gears to college basketball – a sport that is not ravaged by conference superiority debates and conspiracies about SEC bias!
ESPN’s coverage of college basketball is as in-depth as anything Bristol does and their roster of announcers is akin to John Calipari actually keeping all of his recruits for four years. It’s stacked from top to bottom. ESPN is making a couple of notable changes this year to the lineup.
Here’s the entire announcing lineup and some thoughts below…
Monday
ACC – Sean McDonough, Shane Battier, Allison Williams
Big 12 – Brent Musburger, Fran Fraschilla, Holly Rowe
Tuesday
Big Ten – Mike Tirico, Dan Dakich, Sam Ponder
Big 12 – Dave Flemming, Miles Simon
SEC – Brad Nessler, Sean Farnham
Wednesday
ACC – Bob Wischusen, LaPhonso Ellis
Pac 12 – Dave Pasch, Bill Walton
Thursday
American – Mike Patrick, Len Elmore, Bob Knight
American (Select) – Dave O’Brien, Doris Burke
Big Ten – Rece Davis, TBA
Pac 12 – Dave Pasch, Bill Walton
SEC – Joe Tessitore, Sean Farnham
Saturday
ACC – Dave O’Brien, Doris Burke
American – Mike Patrick, Len Elmore, Bob Knight
Big 12 – Jon Sciambi, Fran Fraschilla
SEC – Mark Jones, Kara Lawson
Saturday Primetime – Dan Shulman, Jay Bilas, Shannon Spake
Sunday
ACC – Adam Amin, Brad Daugherty (ESPNU)
Studio Analysts
Shane Battier, Seth Greenberg, Jay Williams, Jim Calhoun, Craig Robinson, Stan Heath, Brad Daugherty, Dan Dakich, LaPhonso Ellis, Sean Farnham, Fran Fraschilla, Jeff Goodman, Andy Katz, Kara Lawson, Miles Simon; Dino Gaudio and Adrian Branch (ESPNU)
* As we’ve discussed before, Jay Bilas is replacing Dick Vitale on the premier Saturday night primetime telecasts. Both Bilas and Vitale will also call top games throughout the week according to ESPN and Vitale will work other “marquee” games on Saturdays. Consider this the unofficial passing of the torch to Bilas – he’s the unquestioned #1 cbb analyst at ESPN now. It’ll be interesting to see where those two slide in amongst ESPN’s fairly well-established broadcast teams.
* Bilas and Rece Davis will be joined on College GameDay by two fresh faces – Jay Williams and Seth Greenberg. You can listen to our enlightening podcast with the pair here. College GameDay will also have more flexibility this year as they seek to travel to the biggest games every week.
* ESPN is expecting big things from former Duke star Shane Battier. Not only does he get top billing in the studio, but a plum assignment next to Sean McDonough on Big Monday, one of the top broadcast windows on the network.
* Brent Musburger remains in his spot calling Big 12 basketball games this season and will not be seen on SEC Network. The play by play duties for ESPN’s conference network offspring will be Dave Neal, Tom Hart, and Dave Baker. SEC Nation host Joe Tessitore will remain with the conference on Thursdays with Sean Farnham after calling Big Ten games last year.
* How far has Bob Knight fallen in the broadcasting ranks? He’s completely off the radar this year calling American Conference games in a three-man booth with Mike Patrick and Len Elmore.
* Most importantly, we’re all treated to another season with possibly our favorite broadcast team in all of sports – Dave Pasch and Bill Walton. We’ve missed the big redhead.
