We reported last week about the hectic schedule NBC is planning to have Mike Tirico on between the start of the upcoming Winter Olympics in China and the Super Bowl, but now we’re learning starting next week CBS Sports legend Jim Nantz will be on an equally-hectic schedule.
With the NFL schedule extending by a few weeks given the extra regular season game and expanded playoffs, next weekend’s AFC championship game has cut into the start of the CBS PGA Tour broadcast season.
But the network has devised a plan for Nantz to still be a part of the golf broadcast team and call the AFC title game on Sunday. CBS and the PGA Tour will hold its Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego starting Wednesday and ending Saturday, instead of the traditional Thursday to Sunday schedule.
This is an acknowledgement of how big a ratings draw the AFC championship will be for CBS. So Nantz will anchor PGA Tour coverage from wherever the NFL game will be on Friday and Saturday, either Nashville, Kansas City or Buffalo, in a production truck under the stadium.
“I can say this: I didn’t want to miss it,” Nantz was reported by USA Today as saying in a conference call on Wednesday. “It definitely will not compromise anything that I’m doing on the football side.”
Nantz reportedly has a home in Nashville where he spends a portion of his down time. In a perfect world, the Tennessee Titans beat the Cincinnati Bengals in the divisional round this weekend and host next week’s conference championship game. That would allow Nantz to at least sleep in his own bed all week.
He told reporters after he and Tony Romo call the other divisional game on Sunday night in Kansas City, he’ll be in Los Angeles on Monday shooting a March Madness commercial. He plans to go home to Nashville on Tuesday, but he wants to follow all of the action of the golf tournament starting Wednesday.
“I’m going to be in place on Wednesday, wherever the AFC Championship game is, because the tournament is going to start that day,” he said. “So I want to watch the coverage, every minute of it, on Wednesday and Thursday.”
Still not as crazy as Tirico having to fly thousands of miles from Beijing to LA and do Olympic primetime and Super Bowl coverage on no rest, but Nantz will certainly be busy all next week.