CBS Sports Network adds Houston Nutt, Ron Zook, Tim Brewster
CBS Sports Network has made some hires for the 2012 college football season that could best be described as "interesting." The network is bringing on former Arkansas and Ole Miss coach Houston Nutt, former Florida and Illinois coach Ron Zook, and former Minnesota coach Tim Brewster. Brewster will be a color commentator (teamed with Dave Ryan and Evan Washburn on gameday), while Nutt and Zook will be studio analysts for the network.
Think about that for a minute. Houston Nutt and Ron Zook... analyzing football games.
After early success with Ole Miss, and a ten year tenure at Arkansas that saw the team reach eight bowl games, Nutt finished 6-18 in his final two seasons in Oxford, including losses to Jacksonville State, Louisiana Tech, and a pair of defeats to Vanderbilt. Zook is known as a master recruiter that couldn't coach a game to save his life, He never coached the Gators to the SEC championship game, never won a bowl game, and never beat either Miami or Florida State just once during his time as Florida head coach. With Illinois, Zook led the team to the 2007 Rose Bowl, but finished above .500 in just one other season - 2010 when the team was 7-6.
These moves for CBS aren't dynamic, blow the roof off the house type of signings.
They actually skew more towards the ESPN style of "let's load up our analyst positions with former coaches and players!" and hope one or two stick. Nutt has had brief experience as an analyst, working with ESPN last season and has a radio show on Sirius XM, but Zook is a novice in the TV world. I didn't spend much time talking about Brewster, who was a disaster as Minnesota head coach. He served as a sideline reporter/analyst last season for Fox. Brewster's lack of a return to Fox after just one year tells you how well that worked out, though.
With Fox also bringing in Eddie George and Joey Harrington for their studio show along with Erin Andrews, the glut of former players and coaches populating the ranks of analysts is staggering, but how many are really working out?
[h/t: Clarion-Ledger]
I watched the game last night, Houston vs La Tech. Zook is probably the worst announcer of all time!
Let us also not forget that Eddie George used to be a studio analyst for the BCS on FOX and that Joey Harrington was a 2nd analyst for Oregon Ducks games on the Oregon Sports Network in 2010 and was an analyst for The Longhorn Network last year either!!!
@desipiodotcom I can't wait to hear Zook's breakdown of special teams play and intelligent timeout usage and clock management.
