Football viewing experience undergoes significant changes

Normally, football royalty names such as Brady, Belichick and Saban would command all the attention for transitioning into broadcasting for the soon-to-start gridiron season.

But while those certainly are major headliners in the vastly new TV landscape this year, they are far from the only focus in what will be a much different way for fans — especially of college football — to watch the sport.

We’ll start with the big names:

TOM’S TIME: Former pro quarterback extraordinaire Tom Brady has joined Fox, which pushed Greg Olsen out of its No. 1 game analyst role to open the spot for Brady — and his reported $375 million salary spread across 10 years. He joins play-by-play broadcaster Kevin Burkhardt, who replaced Joe Buck on Fox’s lead NFL crew after Buck moved to ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” three seasons ago.

Brady actually made his Fox debut in St. Louis, where he had a cameo appearance in the booth for the United Football League title game June 16. He gets going for real Sept. 8 for Dallas’ contest in Cleveland.

There has been a lot of questioning if Brady can translate his success on the field, where he carved defenses, into the booth, where a great analyst likewise can carve teams and personnel in an analytical, not personal, fashion. After all, Brady never was a glib quote machine as a player.

He addressed his approach in an appearance this summer on an episode of the “SI Media With Jimmy Traina“ podcast, saying he might actually have to tone down what he is thinking.

“The important part for me would be how do I continue to make it fun for people to enjoy the viewing experience,” Brady said. “Sometimes I get a little too serious because I see myself as ‘quarterback Tom Brady’ as opposed to ‘let’s enjoy a great game of football Tom Brady.’ Sometimes I become a little too critical. So I’m trying to make sure I have the right tone. I’m very specific of how I think the game should be played. I want to see the game evolve and grow.”

“I think there’s a high expectation of how I expect the game to be played because I was there and I saw Coach (Bill) Belichick and I saw Hall of Famers and I played with them and played against them and I played in big games,” Brady said. “There’s just a certain expectation level that I see for really great performers.”

NICK’S KNACK: While Brady will have a prominent NFL role, legendary college football coach Nick Saban will have a key broadcasting post at that level. Saban, who retired in the offseason after an iconic coaching career that included winning seven national titles — six at his final stop, Alabama — has been added to ESPN’s “College GameDay” show, the popular Saturday morning program leading into the long day of game action.

Saban, at the Southeastern Conference football preseason hype sessions last month, vowed to prepare for “GameDay” in a similar fashion to what he did for an opponent on the field.

“For this (event), I talked to every coach, I watched everybody’s spring game,” he said. “I looked at some film to try to figure it out. I’m going to do the same thing in the fall when it comes to ‘GameDay.’”

Unlike Brady, who said he might have to try to not be overly critical, Saban sounds as if he will take a different approach.

“Nobody has told me I have to be critical,” he said then. “I don’t want to be critical. I want to be objective, but I don’t want to be controversial. You can take any decision … that anybody makes and make it controversial. Like, if we go for it on fourth-and-3 we’d have 100,000 people in Alabama say, ‘I’m glad he’s going for it.’ And we’d have 100,000 people say, ‘He’s (dumb) for going for it.’”

Saban contributed to ESPN’s NFL draft coverage and is set for his “GameDay” debut Aug. 24. That leads into the first game of the season, Florida State and Georgia Tech tangling in Dublin, Ireland, in a game to be televised on ESPN.

TWIN BILL: The “Big Three” additions to the football broadcasting scene this season is rounded out by iconic former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, he of six Super Bowl titles while leading the team. He’s set to pull double duty, appearing on ESPN2’s “ManningCast” alternate version of ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” telecasts and on “Inside the NFL,” the storied weekly show that now is on CW Network.

Belichick is scheduled to be on every one of the 11 “ManningCasts” this season (including playoffs), beginning Sept. 9 when the Jets and 49ers meet to cap the season’s opening week. The shows are co-hosted by former NFL quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning and feature several high-profile guests each time.

Belichick also has been added to the “Inside the NFL” panel of former NFL players Ryan Clark, Chris Long and Chad Johnson. That program used to mix recaps of the previous week’s action and NFL Films premium-level highlights with commentary and a look at the coming week’s schedule and was a staple on HBO and Showtime for decades. But it has bounced around in recent years and could use a boost that Belichick could provide in its retooled format.

“Inside” is set for its second season on the CW Network, and the focus is being shifted to discussion on upcoming games more than looking back. It also is being moved to Fridays instead of its former Tuesday night slot. Its season kicks off with a league preview show Aug. 30.

“I’m thrilled to join my new team at NFL Films and to work on such a historic television franchise,” Belichick said in a statement. “I’ve always appreciated ‘Inside the NFL’s’ depth of analysis, and I hope to bring the same detailed insight to the CW.”

There is a maze of significant changes in the way college football will be televised — most notably the loss of CBS’ Saturday afternoon showcase slot for a big game in the league, a staple for decades.

ABC now has that feature slot for the SEC, part of a 10-year deal with Disney worth a reported $300 million annually that is beginning. Games will be spread across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, SEC Network and ESPNU. 

While mid-afternoon will remain a key spot for Disney, it won’t necessarily always be the most important one.

“It should be one of the two best games, at least on paper, each week,” Nick Dawson, senior vice president of college sports programming and acquisitions for those Disney outlets, said. “There will be times we shift the feature game to ABC in prime time. We’d have an SEC game on ABC; it might just be the second game, or ‘A-’ game.”

For Week 1, Miami-Florida is set for the mid-afternoon spot with Notre Dame-Texas A&M to follow in the evening.

CBS replaces the SEC with the Big Ten in that marquee midafternoon Saturday slot, sharing that league’s package with NBC and Fox. CBS kicks things off Aug. 31 with Akron-Ohio State. Big Ten Network also remains in the mix. It also will have the Big Ten title game.

Fox joins the shake-things-up crowd, adding a Friday night game throughout the season with contests coming from the Big Ten, Big 12 and Mountain West conferences. That schedule kicks off Sept. 13 with Arizona at Kansas State. Illinois appears in the package the following Friday with a game at Nebraska.

Key NFL moves this season center on streaming, something the league began to kick into high gear three seasons ago when it shuffled most of its Thursday night games from over-the-air TV to Amazon Prime Video — where the vast majority of them