Inside the bitter split between the SEC and CBS: 'They just dug their heels in. They would not move'

As he does nearly every fall Saturday afternoon, Roy Kramer will settle into his seat within the living room of his Tennessee home to watch a now 27-year-old tradition — one that he helped start.

Promptly at 3:30 p.m. ET, bursting from the speakers of his television, the religious experience begins. High-pitched horns and rumbling snare drums. Sixteen defining notes and a choir of voices.

The melody builds into a spine-tingling crescendo of percussion and brass as side-by-side acronyms flash onto the screen: SEC on CBS.

To call it theme music is a disservice, almost disrespectful to so many who for nearly three decades have watched their beloved Southern college football teams battle on the gridiron.

This is the anthem of SEC football.

And soon, it’s going away.

“There’s a certain feeling of emptiness in seeing the CBS logo leave the SEC,” said Kramer, the former SEC commissioner. “But times change. The conference has made a strong step into the future. As one looks back over that period of time, the association between the SEC and CBS was significant for both.”

On Saturday, over an eight-hour stretch, the network will air its final SEC doubleheader. It’s a doozy: at 3:30 p.m. ET, Georgia hosts Missouri with the SEC East Division lead on the line; at 7:45 p.m., Alabama hosts LSU with the SEC West Division lead on the line.

In the final year of the league’s divisional format, the two games will shape the championship race, all leading up to the SEC title game in Atlanta — CBS’ final SEC football broadcast as its 15-year agreement with the league expires.

Nearly 30 years ago, the SEC, burgeoning as a football power conference, and CBS, dabbling its toe in the college game, struck one of the most valuable partnerships in the sport’s history — each of them using the other to evolve into a powerful pairing within the industry.

The music. The imagery. The games.

The CBS weekly SEC game at 3:30 p.m. ET has been the highest-rated regular-season college football package on any network for 14 consecutive seasons.

“I think CBS took a regional product, partnered with the great play of the conference, and made it a national brand,” said Gary Danielson, lead CBS color analyst since 2006. “It was 3:30. It was destination TV. It was SEC on CBS.”

So, why is it ending?

The story of the SEC and CBS is a winding journey that started as a happy marriage, turned quite rocky and then led to divorce during renewal negotiations in 2020. For three years, they’ve co-existed knowing of their inevitable separation and their new dance partners — CBS with the Big Ten and the SEC with ESPN.

But the fissures started more than a decade ago, festering within the Southeast footprint, most notably chapping the league’s former commissioner, Mike Slive, and a group of presidents, many of whom are now retired and are free to speak truths.

“We feel like CBS rode the SEC for a long time,” said Bernie Machen, the former Florida president who was involved in network negotiations. “They got away with it. They held us at bay for a dozen years.”

The SEC on CBS

Jim Nantz’s voice is barely audible through the roar of the crowd at Neyland Stadium.

“It’s a guaranteed high-speed showdown that should be wide open,” Nantz says to television viewers. “Football at its fearless best. All out for the eventual shot at No. 1. The buildup has lasted a year and now it’s arrived.

“Coming up next on CBS!”

The first SEC game that CBS televised — No. 4 Florida at No. 2 Tennessee in 1996 — ended in a furious second-half comeback from the Volunteers that fell short. Coach Steve Spurrier and his hotshot quarterback, Danny Wuerffel, beat Phillip Fulmer and Peyton Manning 35-29 in the pouring rain.

The result propelled the Gators to their first national championship and kicked off a partnership between the league and network that so many doubted.

“A lot of people thought we were very misguided and that it was just a regional conference and that people in the Northeast, West and Midwest wouldn’t care enough,” recalled Sean McManus, the chairman of CBS Sports.

A quarter of a century later, he chuckles about that.

“The SEC was good for CBS, and CBS was good for the SEC. It’s a good example of how a partnership paid dividends for all involved,” McManus said before pausing.

“I’d like to think that we can do similar things with the Big Ten.”

But before looking to the future, the past is important.

The Supreme Court’s decision in 1984 — commonly referred to as NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma — paved the way for college football conferences and schools to begin negotiating their own television contracts, to that point only controlled through the NCAA.

Soon afterward, the Big Ten and Pac-12 struck a joint television contract with ABC, and several other conferences banded together to sell their TV rights under the umbrella of the College Football Association. In 1995, the Big East and SEC made, at the time, a controversial move: They left the CFA to partner with CBS in a joint agreement.

And then, in 2000, McManus and Kramer struck what was, at the time, the first contract to give one league an exclusive weekly window on network television.

The SEC on CBS was born.

“That was a turning point in the history of the league, having your own network window every week not shared with other groups,” said SEC executive associate commissioner Mark Womack, the longest-tenured employee at the conference who oversees media rights.

As CBS took over as the exclusive rights-holder for the conference’s weekly best game, the SEC took over college football.

From 1981-2002 — a stretch of 22 seasons — the SEC won three national championships. From 2003-22 — a stretch of 20 seasons — the league has won 14 national championships, including seven consecutive titles that came amid the 2008 renewal of the conference’s deal with CBS.

Gary Danielson’s first season in the league was 2006, the first of those seven straight titles. He replaced Todd Blackledge, who’d left for ESPN and ABC.

At the time, Danielson called the national championship for ABC. Associates in the industry questioned his move to a conference that, for the most part, had trailed other leagues.

“No one is going to hear from you again!” he remembered one acquaintance telling him.

Before Florida’s title in 1996, the SEC went 16 years with just one national championship. Over that span, ACC and Big 12 teams each won three titles. Dating back to the previous decade, spanning the 1960s and 1970s, 10 of 13 champions were from the Midwest or West Coast.

“When I got the job in '06, the SEC had a chip on their shoulder about not being taken seriously,” Danielson recalled. “They were screaming for respect. I did those first few interviews and I remember saying, ‘You’re going to have to earn it!’

“Boy, did they. I’ve had the best seat in football for the last 18 years.”

'Burned in my brain’

In May 2008, inside a meeting room at the Hilton Sandestin along the panhandle of Florida, SEC athletic directors gathered to hear the news: The league was in the final stages of renewing its agreement with CBS.

In one of college football’s richest television deals, they were told, CBS would pay roughly $825 million over a 15-year period, or $55 million annually — roughly double what the network gave the league in the previous eight-year contract.

“The room was celebratory,” said Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart, the only AD present then who is still in the league. “It was a big deal. It gave us stability and staying power.”

However, only a few years into the deal, issues arose.

In 2012, the SEC expanded to add Texas A&M and Missouri to become a 14-team league.

While CBS owned rights to the No. 1 football game each week — as well as two doubleheaders a year — ESPN owned all other SEC games. When the league expanded, ESPN paid what is described as “pro-rata,” increasing distribution from 12 units to 14 to account for the two new schools.

CBS declined to do the same.

Despite multiple attempts from Slive, the network refused to distribute an extra two units. The issue became a years-long tussle between Slive and SEC presidents against the network. It served as the first real fissure between the parties — one that widened as time passed.

“Every time this contract came up in conversation, there wasn’t much love for CBS,” said R. Bowen Loftin, the former Texas A&M and Missouri president who is now retired. “They did us no favors. I felt, and we all felt, they owed us something.”

But a compromise was, indeed, struck around the expansion, said McManus, then president of CBS Sports. It just didn’t involve money.

In the original contract with CBS, the network owned the three-hour exclusive window starting at 3:30 p.m. ET. No SEC games could kick off during that stretch. After expansion, the network permitted the league to air games during that window on the SEC Network, which started that same year as the Aggies and Tigers entered the conference.

“That was the exchange in value,” McManus said.

Others look at it differently.

“The $55 million is burned in my brain. It never went up,” said Machen, who presided then over the SEC presidents and chaired the league’s media rights committee. “They just dug their heels in. They would not move. I don’t know why. We thought CBS would fold. We thought they would get competitive. We thought at the end of the contract they’d fear losing us and it would bump.”

Over the course of several years, Slive and the SEC made a series of short-term ultimatums to CBS. “We’d say, ‘OK, you’re not going to get away with this small amount much longer!’ and we’d push another two or three years,” Machen recalled.

Nothing worked. Nothing changed.

In fact, the qualms between league administrators and the network only grew.

In normal cases, CBS did not make its game selection until two weeks out. Such a delay held up schools from announcing kickoff times until the network chose its pairing. At times, the network used what is called a “hold” on a selection to six days before kickoff. That made scheduling even more difficult.

But above all the gripes, the financials were the most glaring.

By the time 2019 rolled around — a decade into the contract — CBS held, by far, the No. 1 single-game weekly package in all of college sports and yet only paid about $3.5 million per game. For comparison's sake, ESPN will soon pay around $20 million for that same game.

For CBS, that’s the sign of a strong deal, some say.

Mike Aresco, now commissioner of the American Athletic Conference, worked with McManus and the late SEC consultant Chuck Gerber in striking that 2008 renewal agreement. He acknowledges that the deal was “favorable” for CBS.

“That’s when the SEC won seven straight championships,” Aresco said. “Then it became really valuable.”

The SEC finalized the 2008 agreement during the exclusive negotiating window with CBS. The league never took the package to market, something that may not have produced great results, said Womack. Neither NBC nor Fox was interested. And ESPN already had secured the cable portion of the SEC’s deal. ABC inked deals with other leagues.

“You look around at the competition in the marketplace, it wasn't that much,” Womack said. “That CBS package has proven … look, like most long-term deals, you look back and the agreement might not look as good as when you did the deal.”

The SEC vs. the Big Ten

In 2020, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey navigated a pandemic-impacted football season that left him, at times, sitting on his porch asking, “What’d I get myself into?”

What few knew is that he juggled something else that fall: the SEC’s new television-rights negotiations.

In the end, two entities vied for the SEC’s weekly top football game rights: CBS and ESPN.

Sankey describes the negotiations as “straightforward rights conversations,” and while he declined to reveal specifics, he told Yahoo Sports that he entered with the “first priority” as renewing with CBS.

What happened?

“I respect that CBS had to make decisions. CBS understands we had to make decisions,” Sankey said. “Everybody makes decisions. I’m a more forward-looking person.”

McManus said the separation was “amicable.” The financials just didn’t make “sense” for both parties.

“There was no hidden agendas,” he said. “We went into it trying to make a deal that we thought benefited both sides. It was as simple as that.”

ESPN and ABC made an aggressive play. Toward the end of the negotiations, the network’s offer increased to at least $300 million for the 15-game package. But talks went beyond money. Having all of a league’s broadcasting rights under one single network umbrella provided flexibility and control for the conference when it comes to kickoff times — a key issue in the decision, Sankey said.

ESPN ultimately landed the package.

And then, just one day later, McManus reached out to then-Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren.

“I called him and said, ‘I want to do for the Big Ten what we successfully have done with the SEC,’” McManus said.

Days later, at Big Ten headquarters in Chicago, the CBS team made an elaborate presentation during a pitch for Big Ten broadcasting rights. McManus said his message to Warren was clear: “We want to be your partners and are not talking to any other conferences for the 3:30 window.”

For decades, the SEC and Big Ten have waged battle on the field as well as away from it. It’s a sort-of Cold War of college football, two of the industry’s richest and most successful leagues attempting to one-up the other.

This dates back a while, when Slive and then-Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany waged a gentlemanly, off-the-field fight.

“Mike had this love-hate relationship with Jim Delany,” Machen recalled. “They respected each other, but they didn’t want the other to get ahead. I think they woke up each morning asking, ‘How is he getting ahead of me?’”

Sankey and current Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti are much the same. They’ve developed a close rapport and are working toward solutions for the issues around college athletics. Just last week, they met together with multiple U.S. senators in Washington, D.C.

But they remain hotly competitive.

Their two conferences have swelled in both numbers and power during the latest wave of realignment. The new 18-team Big Ten and the new 16-team SEC will account for 12 of the top 13 FBS programs in all-time victories (the outlier: Notre Dame). The two leagues also feature the nation’s top 15 public school athletic departments in producing revenue.

They are goliaths, separating themselves from the pack with vastly different approaches and styles: the Big Ten is now a coast-to-coast conference of largely high-academic institutions in or near massive population centers; the SEC is a contiguous, 12-state league of, many of them, agricultural and mechanical universities located in small college towns.

In the television world, they’ve attached themselves to two similarly fierce rivals: ESPN (the SEC) and Fox (the Big Ten).

Now, there’s a new wrinkle. CBS is retaining its 3:30 p.m. ET time slot on which it will air Big Ten games — directly competing with those at 3:30 on the SEC’s new network home, ABC.

“I think 3:30 on CBS is the most valuable timeframe in college football,” McManus said. “We will work really hard to grow the Big Ten into a national conference. The SEC has been great partners and I wish them well and hope they continue to perform well on and off the field.”

During renewal negotiations with CBS, Sankey said he was not made aware that the network had future plans to pursue rights agreements with the Big Ten.

“That was never addressed with me,” he said. “I’m confident CBS was focused on our relationship first and obviously that changed. Someone else was in the market.”

The SEC on ABC

On Saturday afternoon in Tuscaloosa, Danielson will slide next to co-host Brad Nessler to call his 15th LSU-Alabama game in the last 18 years.

The collision between the Tigers and Tide has been the most-watched game in college football, only rivaled by the Big Ten clash between Michigan and Ohio State.

But this LSU-Alabama showdown will feel different than all the rest. It’s his last.

“It’s tough,” Danielson said of the SEC-CBS split. “I know CBS wanted to keep the package. It’s business. I know Mark Womack and Greg Sankey and all the guys, they are great people. I know Sean [McManus] wanted to keep the package. But I know they are happy about getting the Big Ten.

“It’s been a little different the last three years being a lame duck,” Danielson continued. “I feel it more this year. It feels like everybody can’t wait to get to next year when the playoffs expand and Texas and Oklahoma get in here. It does feel like we’re renting. We’ve sold the home and we are packing and about to move out of the house.”

Since negotiations ended in 2020, the SEC and CBS have lived like a divorced couple under the same roof. The league and ESPN hoped to avoid such circumstances by potentially purchasing from CBS the last two or three years of the rights. CBS offered a figure that was a “non-starter,” said one industry insider.

At ESPN, there is still shock from some that the network won the negotiating battle against CBS. “It’s not often something that’s been in place for 30 years with the same broadcaster changes hands,” said Burke Magnus, ESPN’s president of content and a key player in negotiating the SEC deal.

The move to ESPN — and ABC — will give the SEC more televised games to upward of 130 million households; more control in start times; and multiple windows on network television. Kickoff times for more than half of the league’s games will be announced before the season, and those that are flexed will only move one slot (morning to afternoon or afternoon to evening).

One of the biggest perks, though, is the valuable platform on network television with ABC. SEC doubleheaders on ABC may become quite common, and there are likely to even be tripleheaders too, with kickoffs at noon, 3:30 and 7.

While the league will have a weekly 3:30 p.m. ABC broadcast, its best game doesn’t always have to occupy that slot, Magnus said. It could shift to prime time. For instance, he knows that LSU’s fan base prides itself on the tradition of night games at Tiger Stadium.

“We are going to be fan friendly and flexible,” Magnus said.

ESPN is in the midst of producing distinct imaging and, yes, theme music for its “SEC on ABC” broadcasts in the exclusive 3:30 p.m. ABC window. It will be “unmistakably SEC,” Magnus said.

And what of CBS?

The network is using its same theme music for Big Ten games, seven of which it will air this season. Danielson has called three Big Ten games already in 2023 and he’ll be part of the team next year as the network begins its full slate of Big Ten matchups.

One thing is vastly different, of course: CBS does not receive the first pick of games each week but is instead part of a draft with Fox and NBC in a three-network split of Big Ten rights. Industry experts believe that CBS will pay about $350 million annually for a secondary Big Ten game.

That is believed to be less than what ESPN/ABC is paying for the top SEC game. It leaves some within the media rights industry flabbergasted.

“That was the surprising thing to everyone in the business,” said one former network executive who spoke to Yahoo Sports under condition of anonymity. “They walked on 300 with the SEC and a better game pick and then paid 350 for a less preferential pick.”

Multiple sources within the SEC who had knowledge of the negotiations believe that the league would have likely renewed its deal with CBS for such a price, though there were other extenuating circumstances, such as flexibility and control of kickoff times.

“CBS obviously had the financials to do it. They did it with the Big Ten,” said another TV insider. “They could have done it. They went their own way.”

Maybe there is more to the story, said one television industry source. CBS stands to earn more revenue on the deal with the Big Ten, he said, because the network has more owned and operated stations in that league’s footprint, such as Chicago, Detroit and Minneapolis.

Either way, McManus looks at the positives.

Sure, he said, the Big Ten on CBS will feel different and, yes, it will be a transition. After all, the network will move broadcasting from Tuscaloosa, Knoxville and Baton Rouge to Ann Arbor, Columbus and Los Angeles.

And yet, he said, “It’s possible in the future that the SEC will continue to do well and the Big Ten and CBS will do very well, too.”

It will be an adjustment — for everyone involved.

SEC longtimers like Roy Kramer will settle on their couches and recliners, grab the remote control and turn to a different three-letter channel. Emanating from their televisions will be a very different tune.

Soon, the SEC will have a new anthem.