The NFL Today: Encyclopedia II - The NFL Today - Chronological story

The NFL Today - Chronological story

The NFL Today - Before The NFL on FOX

The program started in 1975 [1], year in which it won 13 Emmy Awards, with journalist Brent Musburger and fromer NFL player Irv Cross [2], and with former Miss America Phyllis George as one of the reporters. Jimmy Snyder, nicknamed The Greek, joined in in 1976.

Back then The NFL on CBS showed games of the National Football Conference, which was the result of the old NFL before the merger with the American Football League for the 1970 season. CBS had telecast games of the old NFL since the 1956 season.

1979 was the first year the Sports Emmy Awards were awarded to sportscasts, among them The NFL Today.

Phyllis George was replaced by the 1970 Miss Ohio Jayne Kennedy [3][4] from the 1978 to the 1979 NFL season and left the program after the 1983 season. Jimmy Snyder was dismissed by CBS Sports at the end of the 1987 season, one day after making comments about racial differences among NFL players on Martin Luther King Day 1988.

Musburger and Irv Cross left after the 1989 season, as their contracts with CBS Sports were not renewed. They were replaced by Greg Gumbel and famous former Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw.

After the 1993 season, CBS Sports' contract with the NFL to transmit National Football Conference games ended, and the NFC rights were passed to Fox Sports. The NFL Today had a four-year break along with The NFL on CBS from the 1994 to the 1997 NFL seasons. Gumbel went over to NBC Sports and Bradshaw to FOX NFL Sunday.

The NFL Today - After The NFL on NBC's first period

In 1998, NBC Sports' American Football Conference contract expired, and CBS Sports took over the rights to telecast its games. Since then, The NFL Today has not caught up with the TV ratings of FOX NFL Sunday, now its same-time competitor.

Greg Gumbel came back from NBC Sports to work as the lead play-by-play announcer for The NFL on CBS. Jim Nantz became the studio host.

In the meantime there have been eleven studio analysts on the program. Perhaps the showiest of them all was Deion Sanders, who was teammate of Michael Irvin, a 2003 AFL on NBC and current NFL Primetime and SportsCenter commentator. Sanders caught the viewer's eye with his squeaky trash talk and his frequently used flashy apparel: white sports sneakers, black tuxedo, black gloves and big black hat. His favorite vocative to address interviewees was "my man".

Sanders did not get along with Boomer Esiason, who sat to his left, so on Sunday, December 29, 2003, his 2004 New Year resolution was to "love [his] neighbor" [5], but he left to put on the 2004 Baltimore Ravens shirt with his age (37) on its back.

At the start of that same 2003 regular season, CBS Sports introduced the new theme song Posthumus Zone for The NFL Today and for The NFL on CBS. The song was made by Los Angeles electronica group E.S. Posthumus, which is called that way because it composes songs that have dead ancient cities as a motif.

Studio host Jim Nantz and Deion Sanders had their last NFL Today program before Super Bowl XXXVIII on The Super Bowl Today. Greg Gumbel narrated his last NFL on CBS play, Adam Vinatieri's field goal that broke the tie between the New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers.

In August 2004, CBS Sports director Sean McManus announced that Nantz and Gumbel would switch roles, and hired former John Elway teammate Shannon Sharpe to replace Sanders and comment on The NFL Today with Dan Marino and with Esiason.

In November 2004, the NFL signed 6-year contracts with CBS Sports (USD 622.5 M per year) and Fox (USD 712.5 M per year) to continue broadcasting their respective AFC and NFC games from the 2006 to the 2011 seasons.

Nowadays, the program usually runs on Sunday at noon, Eastern Time, and lasts one hour. The outdoor studio, used during the fall, is set up on Sunday mornings at a plaza in front of the reflecting glass structure of an Apple Computer store in the General Motors Building, at 767 5th Avenue and 59th Street (see the map at Google Maps), next to the southeast corner of Central Park. The winter studio is Studio 43 of the CBS Broadcast Center, west of Central Park. However, starting in 2005, The NFL Today was broadcast from Studio 43 all year round.

The show includes segments like the CarQuest Chalk Talk, in which commentators and program guests discuss team strategies, and Outside the Huddle with computer-animated PUNT TV pregame host Thurston Long, who makes fun of people around the NFL. He is electronically rendered by animators of Scripted Improv Media, Synergistix Media, and of Viacom (VIA), the publicly traded company that owns CBS itself, and with the help of animators and animation software of face2face, a joint venture of Lucent Technologies and other investors [6].

The commentators of The NFL Today also comment on The NFL on CBS on game updates, on the Nextel Halftime Report and on the Subway Postgame Show.

On 2005-06-15, Viacom announced the spin-off its CBS division, which could mean the end of Outside the Huddle.

In 2006 E.S. Posthumus will release a new CD with the Posthumus Zone on it.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Chronological story", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki