gus2
Our pal Richard Deitsch of SI.com, who broke the news about Gus Johnson not being hired by NFL Network for Thursday Night Football, has relayed even more shocking and stunning news.  Gus Johnson is done at CBS Sports.  That means come March Madness next year, you won’t hear Gus calling any of the action.  Here’s an excerpt

SI.com has learned that CBS recently parted ways with Gus Johnson, a play-by-play mainstay on its college basketball coverage for 16 years. Johnson has also worked as a play-by-play voice for the network’s NFL coverage since 1998.

The two parties could not agree on a new deal.

Industry sources said Johnson has spoken with Fox Sports about a role in its college football coverage. Fox Sports (which has a 49 percent ownership share in the Big Ten Network) recently upped its inventory of college football as part of the 12-year, $3 billion contract between the Pac-10 (soon to be the Pac-12) and ESPN and Fox. 

Wooooooooow.  This is perhaps the biggest announcing story of the year so far and we will be all over it at AA in the coming hours and days.  It will be very, very interesting to see where Gus lands on his feet, but it’s a sad story for fans of Gus and the NCAA Tournament that Johnson and CBS have parted ways.  Back in January, Gus told AA that his dream job was announcing the Final Four.  

“I dream about calling the Final Four and the National Championship game.  As a broadcaster that’s the only thing that I’d like to do that I haven’t done.  College basketball is my thing and gives me great joy.  If there was one thing I’d like to do one day, and I’m still relatively young, I think one day I’d like to have the chance to do that.  One day I hope that will happen.”

Unfortunately, that dream seems much further away for Johnson.  We’ll update the story as more information is released.

Comments are closed.