Well, it's over. The voice long associated with March Madness will not be calling any college basketball games for CBS/Turner Sports next year. Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News reports the following.
"CBS declined to match Fox's offer," said an industry source. "They let Johnson's people know today."
A CBS source who wanted Johnson back said not only money, but politics was an issue. The source said some of CBS Sports' college hoops voices were not thrilled with Johnson's rise to March Madness' most popular voice.
This is a pretty devastating blow for CBS, and the mention of politics seems to have Jim Nantz's bloody fingerprints over it.
Nantz and CBS Sports honchos have probably been hearing about the burdening Internet movement to get Johnson the lead job for the Final Four, and Nantz has always been CBS's guy. Johnson was never going to go any further higher up the hierarchy of CBS, so his departure was almost preordained.
The nation's loss of Johnson is another huge gain for Larry Scott and college football fans on the West Coast, as he now has a remarkable voice to lead the conference through the next decade--the same article reports Gus is headed to the Pac-12. He figures to be calling Pac-12 football on FOX in tandem with Big Ten basketball on the BTN (unless he decides to also move to cover Pac-12 hoops too) for the near future. He will also be joining the NFL on FOX, and based on his now West Coast profile, could be covering a lot of NFC West games soon enough.
So, can Johnson handle the biggest football games? You be the judge.
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