To prevent a ratings disaster, the Farmers Insurance Open will run from Wednesday to Saturday in order to avoid the NFL’s conference championship games. It’s a smart move by CBS and the PGA Tour but it also means Jim Nantz will be a busy man that weekend.
While on a Zoom conference call, Nantz revealed that he will be on the broadcast for the PGA Tour event but he won’t actually be at Torrey Pines that Friday and Saturday. Nantz will instead call the golf tournament from the site of the AFC Championship Game, where Nantz will be on the call for the game that Sunday.
Because the tournament is in San Diego and the AFC Championship Game will either be in Nashville, Buffalo, or Kansas City, it’s going to be rather difficult for Nantz to fly back and forth across the country multiple times that weekend. So if he’s going to work both events, it’s a product of necessity to stay in one place and work one event in-person and go remote for the other.
Nantz detailed his schedule for next week which includes shooting a Capital One commercial that will air during March Madness.
“We have the Sunday night game in Kansas City,” he said. “Monday I’m in New York shooting a Capital One commercial with Spike Lee that runs during March Madness. Tuesday I will be home in Nashville.
“I’m going to be in place on Wednesday, wherever the AFC Championship game is, because the tournament (Farmers) is going to start that day. So I want to watch the coverage, every minute of it, on Wednesday and Thursday.
“On Friday and Saturday, our two CBS broadcast days [for golf], those are 5 o’clock Eastern time starts, and again I’m just going to go with the 1-seed at the moment and say we’re going to be in Nashville, because they have home-field. It may not play out that way but that will be a 4 o’clock broadcast [for football]. I would say at some point around 2 o’clock, about two hours before the broadcast to make sure the signal and everything is on time and there’s not a lag and we’re coordinated. I will be at the stadium and I’ll not in all likelihood be in the broadcast booth where we’ll call the game on Sunday but probably be in a truck inside the stadium, in a production truck. And away we go. I’m looking forward to it very much.”
It won’t be very long until Nantz works March Madness and we hear him talk about The Masters being a “tradition unlike any other.”
[Golfweek]
About Phillip Bupp
Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them.
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