CBS Sports ready to celebrate 50th anniversary of ‘The NFL Today’

“You are looking live!”

Brent Musburger is certain that on Sunday — upon his return to CBS Sports’ “The NFL Today” for a special Week 3 throwback episode commemorating the 50th anniversary of the show — he will be asked to recite that signature catchphrase through which he established the setting ahead of Sunday afternoon kickoffs across the National Football League.

“The NFL Today” first started airing live when Musburger became host in 1975, replacing a pre-taped studio program that featured Jack Whitaker and Pat Summerall. Show director Bob Fishman had friends who wanted to know the weather at stadiums to inform their gambling decisions, and the “you are looking live” became essential information — and ended up becoming synonymous with the program. In fact, there are still instances when consumers will approach Musburger on the street and recite the iconic phrase back to him.

As Musburger appears on “The NFL Today” live on Sunday morning, he will reminisce on his time anchoring the program and the indelible legacy of the show. The upcoming episode will feature classic production elements, including the old-school theme music and graphics, along with a virtual recreation of the original set utilizing modern technology. Those elements will be accompanied by flashbacks to program that helped catalyze the growth of football and showcase the personalities on the gridiron.

“The biggest reason why the NFL exploded is because no team sport that I covered ever translates to television like football, especially professional football,” Musburger said. “What do I mean? Well, it’s a right to left, a feel, so that baseball, for example, is not laid out that way, and baseball, prior to the rise of the NFL, was certainly this nation’s pastime, and the television changed that, so let’s be perfectly clear about that. And then shows like ‘The NFL Today’ came along and started to make it more of an event, a longer thing to watch.”

Harold Bryant, who oversees aspects of CBS Sports programming as an executive producer and the executive vice president of production for the division, said that it will be thrilling to have Musburger back in the studio. “We’re talking about relevant stories, we’re tapping into relevant analysis, so that’s what makes it important, but [what] gives it staying power is that it’s very connected to the game,” Bryant said. “We don’t try to make it a hot-take show or a show that might, every four or five years, take on a new look and feel. It’s the show of record.”

‘You Are Looking Live’

Musburger made his debut as the host of the show with analyst Irv Cross and reporter Phyllis George as the NFL began the 1975 season on Sunday, Sept. 21. The season was starting amid tension after NFL stars engaged in a five-day strike amid labor negotiations between the owners and players union.

CBS aired a doubleheader of games on this day that, in the New York metropolitan area, included Summerall and Tom Brookshier calling the New York Giants’ matchup against the Philadelphia Eagles followed by Lindsey Nelson and Sonny Jurgensen commentating the showdown between the Los Angeles Rams and Dallas Cowboys.

“I certainly was never a one-man band, but because I was somewhat unpredictable, the people that worked with me had to pay attention, and that made it spontaneous, and we listened to each other,” Musburger said. “So the one criticism that I would have overall of certain groups of announcers [is] they don’t listen well, and I’ve always prided myself on listening to what people have to say, and the chemistry was not made up.”

Musburger considers landing the hosting job to be, in part, a product of luck in that CBS Sports president Robert Wussler used to oversee WBBM-TV in Chicago, which is where he hosted evening sports segments. Once Mussler was appointed to lead the national sports division, he conceptualized “The NFL Today” and compiled the inaugural cast of the show.

After the first season, CBS Sports added Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder to the show where he predicted game scores and outlined team strengths and weaknesses, which helped facilitate the proliferation of sports betting. An underlying difficulty was in condensing everything to fit the half-hour program.

“Well that was strictly personality challenges, and thank God for Irv Cross,” Musburger said. “I could have gone that entire show without Irv saying more than, at the introduction, ‘Hi,’ and what he was going to talk about because it was a battle. It was a battle of people. That’s how ‘The Greek’ and I get into it [because] he wanted more airtime, so that was probably the most difficult thing that we had to deal with, but we made it work, and on we went.”

Turning Back the Clock

CBS is airing a singleheader on Sunday with matchups airing in the early and late windows, but the entire country will have access to view “The NFL Today” featuring former NFL players Nate Burleson, Bill Cowher and Matt Ryan. James Brown is in the midst of his 20th year hosting the show, but he also used to work with Musburger reporting on CBS basketball broadcasts earlier in his career.

“At our recently held NFL seminar, I was humbled to be able to interview Brent,” Brown said. “He was a special guest by way of satellite, if you will, virtual, and I got a chance to query him in about a three- to five-minute session, and it was awesome because he is still sharp as a tack. So the bottom line is while we’ll wait to see what unfolds as the producers lay the show out, one thing I can tell you is that we all better be sharp and ready because he is as sharp as a tack.”

While Musburger is well known for his time on the studio show, he regularly traveled around the country and worked seven days a week contributing to other CBS Sports broadcast coverage. Even after his contract was not renewed by CBS Sports in 1990, he continued viewing the show and watching its evolution from afar.

“I watch them today, and the show has evolved — it’s very comfortable listening with the four guys that they’ve got in there now, and technically, they’re ahead of us,” Musburger said. “Technology has changed dramatically. When ‘The NFL Today’ was born, we were still using two-inch videotape to edit, and now with the computer systems and everything that they’ve got, and they have access, so it was comfortable.”

When Musburger’s contract was not renewed by CBS Sports in 1990, the network chose Greg Gumbel to serve as host of “The NFL Today”. Gumbel worked with Terry Bradshaw, Lesley Visser, Jim Gray and Pat O’Brien for four years before the network lost rights to the NFC in 1994. Four years later, the show returned with Jim Nantz at the helm, and he remained in the role before moving into the broadcast booth with Phil Simms in 2004.

Gumbel had occupied that position for the previous six seasons and returned to the studio for two more years before Brown took over in 2006. Bryant believes the program having only four hosts over a 50-year span is “very significant” and a testament to the selections the company made.

“We look for top-of-the-line people that can host the show, and they’ve done a great job over the years,” Bryant said. “If you talk to any of the hosts, it’s a very special opportunity for them, and then they relish it and they put everything they can into it, and they understand the meaning.”

Blending Tradition and Innovation

There have been some changes to “The NFL Today” in recent years, including the reduced number of cast members to yield more time for those in the studio and at the stadiums to express their insights and ideas. In addition, the show is in its second year operating out of a modernized studio space equipped with enhanced production capabilities and ambience that Bryant explained is more visually appealing.

Whereas Brown and his colleagues used to deliver game breaks and updates throughout the afternoon, that responsibility has been granted to Adam Schein while the team focuses on creating social media content instead.

“We’re going to use that time to create takes that we can post, mainly after games — we’re not going to do anything during the game, that’s not our goal right now – but to really allow them to dig in deeper and analyze what happened in those games,” Bryant said. “A lot of times, postgames are so quick, you don’t have time to really break it down. This is their opportunity to really dig in and break it down.”

CBS Sports made alterations to the timeslot before the heralded studio show by creating a new offering featuring Ryan with analysts Antonio Pierce and Kyle Long with host Amanda Guerra. The program, titled “The NFL Today+,” is exclusive to CBS Sports HQ, Paramount+ and the CBS Sports YouTube channel, and it seeks to appeal to a younger audience consuming content on mobile devices and digital platforms. The company had previously aired That Other Pregame Show for the last 12 seasons but felt it was time to make a change.

“It’s not as presentational,” Bryant said. “It’s a lot more open and loose, and it appeals to a younger group, and we’re trying to engage with influencers. We’re trying to pull in as many other audiences as we can that have an interest in football, but they might not want just the straightforward storylines and information that leads right up into the game.”

Harkening back on his time working with David Hill at Fox Sports, Brown knows to “sugarcoat the education pill” and prepares to set up his colleagues for success while extrapolating his viewpoints as well.

“I’d like to think from a corporate standpoint that we have never violated the tenet of making sure that we do make the game fun, but that we’re giving the audience the very best insight there is,” Brown said, “because as you guys know, the audience has grown its intelligence and understanding of the sport, so you can’t feed them in the same fashion as you did way back in the day.”

Countdown to Kickoff

NFL games were responsible for 72 of the top-100 most-watched telecasts in the United States last year according to data from Nielsen Media Research. The league has been able to bolster its overall revenue and currently holds an equity stake in Paramount, the parent company of CBS, through a previous venture with Skydance Media.

“[W]hen ‘The NFL Today’ started, it was the No. 1 sport,” Musburger said. “Well today, it’s the No. 1 entertainment vehicle, and all you have to do is look at the television ratings for an entire year, and the NFL product dominates the ratings as far as millions and millions of viewers who enjoy the games for a lot of reasons.’”

Musburger was among the personalities who helped catalyze the growth of football, and he was honored with the prestigious Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in August. After 35 years away from “The NFL Today” desk, he is ready to make this special cameo on the show.

“I was thrilled that they invited an old man to come and be there with them, and of course I’m going to say ‘Yes,’” Musburger remarked. “It’s just part of my life, and one other little thing. Now my grandkids can figure out, ‘Hey, grandpa really was an announcer once upon a time.’”