CBS didn’t exactly nail Gary Danielson’s sign-off on New Year’s Eve.
The network cut to commercial while its longtime college football analyst was mid-sentence during his retirement message following the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl, abruptly ending what should have been an emotional sign-off after 36 years in broadcasting.
But the College Football Today crew had already delivered the sendoff Gary Danielson deserved moments earlier on Wednesday’s postgame show, taking time to honor their colleague with genuine tributes before CBS would bungle his actual farewell a few minutes later.
Rick Neuheisel, Brian Jones, Aaron Taylor, and Adam Zucker each spoke about what Danielson brought to the booth over nearly four decades, offering specific, heartfelt praise that revealed how much his colleagues valued working alongside him.
“Gary, been a long time [since] we’ve been together. You’ve been doing this while I was still coaching as a kid,” Neuheisel said. “I’ve always admired your way of explaining things to folks at home with a little nuance that maybe they hadn’t thought about. You’re as gifted as anyone who’s ever done this. And as Carly Simon said in a song, ‘[The] Spy Who Loved Me,’ no one did it better. Enjoy the transition from football to 4-irons, my friend.”
“Congrats on a stellar, unbelievable career, my man,” said Jones. “As Rick was saying, you took the sophisticated, you made it simple. The rapport you had with those you worked with there in the booth, and even with us when we would engage in these two ways. You’re outstanding. Thank you for all the mentorship through the years. Good luck down the road.”
“Gary, I just wanted to say, man, I’ve always respected the way you called games, and I learned a lot from it, as well,” Taylor added. “Just watching you call the game the way you saw it — not the way that other people wanted you to see it — inspired me to try to do the same. You made me better as a person. You made our broadcast as good as they could possibly be. We’re all better off for you bringing your gifts to television. Enjoy your retirement, brother, you have earned it.”
Gary Danielson spent 24 years calling games for CBS alongside Verne Lundquist and Brad Nessler, most of them as the lead voice on the network’s SEC broadcasts. The complaints followed him for just about all of them. SEC bias. Alabama favoritism. The feeling that certain programs got better treatment in his analysis than others. Fans outside the conference felt ignored. Fans inside it felt slighted if their team wasn’t Alabama. Even some Alabama fans thought he went overboard. The perception stuck, fair or not, and Danielson never seemed particularly interested in changing it.
Wednesday’s tributes suggested he didn’t need to. His colleagues saw what mattered — the mentorship Jones thanked him for, the authenticity Taylor tried to emulate, the gift for explanation Neuheisel compared to Carly Simon. And while the network might have fumbled his final moment, the people who worked alongside Gary Danielson for years made sure he got the goodbye that counted.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.