We're still many months away from the 2025 college football season, but the news cycle for the sport is year-round. And today we learned that longtime voice in the sport will be calling it a career after the upcoming season.
CBS college football analyst Gary Danielson to retire following 2025 season
On Wednesday, CBS Sports announced that the 2025 season will be the last for longtime lead college football color commentator Gary Danielson. After what will be his 20th season calling games for the network, 36th overall as a broadcaster, he will retire. Charles Davis, who currently works as a color commentator for NFL games on CBS, will take over for Danielson in 2026, joining play-by-play announcer Brad Nessler.
Gary Danielson announces retirement as CBS Sports’ lead college football analyst following the 2025 season.
— CBS Sports PR (@CBSSportsGang) March 26, 2025
Charles Davis to succeed Danielson beginning in 2026.
Full release: https://t.co/EimlNFUhj6 pic.twitter.com/94SjfBQyko
Danielson will forever be associated with SEC football. He and the legendary Verne Lundquist were the voices of the SEC's biggest matchups each week for more than a decade. The duo were on the call in 2014 when Dak Prescott and Mississippi State defeated Auburn in Starkville to move to No. 1 in the country for the first time in program history.
After Lundquist's retirement from calling football games following the 2016 season, Danielson stayed on with new play-by-play announcer Brad Nessler and spent seven more years commentating on the SEC's premier games. That includes Mississippi State's season-opening upset of defending champion LSU in 2020, the Bulldogs' first game coached by Mike Leach.
In 2024, CBS' contract with the SEC came to an end, marking the end of a memorable era of SEC football. Though despite many memorable games and moments, we can't say Danielson's tenure at CBS was something universally beloved by SEC fans. Many felt that he had a tendency to show favoritism for one school in particular...
Hi everyone. My name is Gary Danielson. And for the next four hours, I’ll be taking you on a tour of the reasons Alabama belongs in the playoff. pic.twitter.com/Xdnn8qsvJ4
— Three Year Letterman (@3YearLetterman) December 3, 2022
Still, it wasn't the same this past season not having Danielson bring up Alabama for no apparent reason in the middle of calling a game that didn't involve the Crimson Tide. That was a core part of Saturday as an SEC football fan for years. And if we can't sit around complaining that the announcer is biased, what do we have as fans?
Gary Danielson and the CBS team switched over the calling games in the Big Ten last season, and they'll be doing the same for Danielson's final season in 2025. Is it possible that having to watch the offenses of the likes of Iowa, Purdue, and Michigan hurried Danielson into retirement? If I was forced to try and make a game that finished 13-9 with 230 combined yards of offense and 18 total punts sound exciting, I'd probably quit too.
Or perhaps not having any excuse to talk about how 3-loss Alabama is a playoff team was the tipping point. If we get late in the season and the Tide's playoff hopes look shot, Gary Danielson deserves the right to serve as a guest analyst for one of their games and spend the entire three and a half hour broadcast arguing for their inclusion in the playoff. It'd be the only appropriate way to send him out.