Debbie Antonelli will not return to CBS for March Madness this season

When CBS called Debbie Antonelli in 2017 and asked if she’d be interested in calling first and second-round games of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, she was so surprised she had to keep herself from swerving off the road.

“I was thrilled, humbled, flattered, excited,” Antonelli told Awful Announcing at the time. “I tried to stay on the road, because I was so excited to think that I was in that conversation.”

Nine years later, that conversation is over. Antonelli announced Wednesday that she will not be returning to CBS for March Madness this season, citing her commitment to ESPN and the NCAA Women’s Tournament. The departure was confirmed the same day CBS and TNT unveiled their full broadcast crews, with Tom McCarthy getting two new analysts — Candace Parker and Dan Bonner — slotting in for Antonelli and Steve Smith.

“Serving as an analyst for first and second-round games of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament for CBS the past nine years has been one of the greatest opportunities of my broadcasting career,” Antonelli wrote. “I will not be continuing in this role this season due to my commitment to ESPN and the NCAA Women’s Tournament. I would like to thank Sean McManus, David Berson, and CBS for providing me with this opportunity. Thank you to my CBS production and play-by-play teammates for the experience, the fun, and the memorable moments. I’m grateful and blessed to have served with some of the best professionals and basketball people on the CBS team.”

Good luck to all my @CBSSportsCBB teammates. Wishing you well and a successful run thru @MarchMadnessMBB https://t.co/Pz69uAwXi7 pic.twitter.com/lsclCSrNis

— Debbie Antonelli (@debbieantonelli) March 4, 2026

The magnitude of what she built at CBS over those nine years shouldn’t get lost in a polite goodbye. When she first got the call from CBS’s Ross Molloy, VP of talent and production planning, she became the first woman to call men’s NCAA Tournament games in 21 years, since Ann Meyers Drysdale did it in 1995. She had to clear it with ESPN first, and they enthusiastically signed off. Dan Bonner — the same Dan Bonner who is now replacing her on McCarthy’s crew — was among the first to call her when the assignment was announced, telling her not to try to prove anything and to just call the game in front of her.

She did exactly that for nearly a decade, most recently alongside McCarthy — including last year’s tournament, where she was still in that same role — while juggling one of the more staggering broadcast workloads in the business. Antonelli averages around 80 national college basketball broadcasts per season across ESPN, the ACC Network, the SEC Network, Big Ten Network, CBS, Fox Sports, and Westwood One, where she’s been the voice of the NCAA Women’s Final Four since 1995. She also covers the Indiana Fever, where Awful Announcing’s readers ranked her and Pat Boylan as the No. 1 local broadcasting team for 2024.

Something had to give eventually. With the women’s tournament continuing to grow — Antonelli has been one of the loudest voices on Caitlin Clark’s generational impact on the sport — the CBS commitment became the odd piece out. She spent 36 years building a career on the premise that women’s basketball deserved the same platform as the men’s game. Stepping back from the men’s tournament to focus on the women’s is, in its own way, consistent with everything she’s stood for.