Well, this is college football season so why not give you some old college football opens from the various networks? It’s always fun when you get rivalry games. The networks treat them with respect and seem to work overtime on the opens. So let’s see how they’ve evolved over the years.
CBS started to broadcast college football in 1982 and late in the decade, got the main contract from the College Football Association. In 1988, it broadcast Miami-Florida State early in the season and Brent Musberger (for the younger readers, he did work for a network other than ABC/ESPN) did the open.
CBS had the contract for the Cotton Bowl for a very long time and here’s an open done by a y0ung Jim Nantz previewing the matchup between UCLA (led by QB Troy Aikman) and Arkansas. No network would take four minutes to open a game now.
Here’s an intro from 1989 as CBS did the Virginia-Clemson game. Jim Nantz standing at the Rock where the Tigers make their spirited entrance.
When ESPN started, it did not have any contracts to air college games live so it had to rely on tape delays. Here one from 1983 when it aired a Metro Sports tape of the UCLA-Brigham Young game from the Rose Bowl.
And in 1984, ESPN re-aired NBC’s broadcast of the Orange Bowl.
By the late 1980’s ESPN had a contract with the CFA and with various bowl games. Here’s 1989 Gator Bowl broadcast voiced by ESPN’s Ron Franklin.
NBC had a great tradition of airing the Fiesta Bowl, the Rose Bowl and the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Day after broadcasting the Tournament of Roses Parade. Here’s NBC’s open from the 1978 Rose Bowl pitting Michigan against Washington. The late Curt Gowdy was the broadcaster and I believe this was one of his last Rose Bowls for NBC before leaving for CBS. I can only provide you the link to this video because the member who posted it to YouTube has disabled embedding.
In 1992, NBC was in the midst of some cost cutting as part of a directive from General Electric so when weather forced the network off the air, it had to resort to finding a Japanese feed and Gayle Gardner and Paul Maguire to fill until the main feed returned. Usually, a backup generator would be present in case of emergency, but NBC was forced to go without one and you see the result.
That’s it. Enjoy.
