On Wednesday, Big Ten Network announced coverage plans for the 2023 college football season, including their lineup of game and studio broadcasters.
This season, BTN will use a rotating pool of analysts and play-by-play broadcasters. The analysts include Jake Butt, Anthony Herron, Matt Millen, and Brock Vereen, who all return from last season. Joshua Perry (who joined NBC’s Big Ten studio coverage earlier this year), Matt McGloin, and J Leman won’t be in the booth for BTN in 2023, though Leman will be in the studio.
The stable of play-by-play broadcasters includes Joe Beninati, Lisa Byington, Mark Followill, Connor Onion, Cory Provus, and Jason Ross Jr. Onion is a new face for this year’s college football season, who called games last season for ESPN. The biggest departure is former lead play-by-play announcer Brandon Gaudin, who took the Atlanta Braves play-by-play job earlier this year.
BTN’s reporters this season include Brooke Fletcher, Meghan McKeown, Elise Menaker, and Justine Ward. Ward is a new addition, while the other three all return from last season.
Rick Pizzo moves from the sidelines to the studio on Saturdays, hosting B1G Tailgate along with returning analysts Gerry DiNardo, Howard Griffith, and Vereen. Mike Hall will continue to be on-site at a different Big Ten campus each week, joined by Tyvis Powell. Other studio coverage throughout the week will be hosted by Hall, Pizzo, and Dave Revsine, and analysts include Nicole Auerbach, Butt, DiNardo, Pat Forde, Griffith, Herron, Leman, and Dave Wannstedt. Urban Meyer’s and DiNardo’s Urban Analysis also returns.
Overall, the lineup is pretty similar to previous years, and that’s not a bad thing. The Big Ten Network generally does a pretty good job at covering the conference’s schools, and I’d expect the standard to continue once we reach the 2023 college football season next month.
