Jason Cohen and Mike Francis, a pair of CBS Sports executives, were sitting near one of the goalposts in Glendale, Arizona, at Super Bowl LVII, when inspiration struck.
Kansas City’s Harrison Butker attempted a 42-yard field goal in the first quarter of last year’s game that bounded with a thud off the left upright. Eureka!
“We looked at each other at the same time, and we were like, ‘Oh, my God,” said Cohen, who is from Syosset.
Cohen, vice president for remote technical operations, and Francis, vice president for engineering and technology, reached out to the NFL during the game with an idea for cameras embedded into the uprights themselves, similar to those used in end zone pylons.
“We literally sent that note from last year’s Super Bowl,” Cohen said. “And it was like, ‘Let us get through this Super Bowl first, and we’ll talk on Monday.’”
CBS ran tests of the concept first at a preseason game between the Jets and Buccaneers at MetLife Stadium and later at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas itself.
Now, 12 months after that Butker miss, CBS is set to unveil its “doink” cameras, six lenses – three on each upright – to provide new angles of kicks that are good, wide or, ideally from CBS’ perspective, bounce off an upright.
When a reporter said during a video news conference on Thursday that he was rooting for that to happen in the game, CBS Sports executive producer Harold Bryant answered, “So are we!”
(Butker, who will be back on the field for Kansas City, presumably does not agree.)
Cohen said the game at MetLife showed the NFL that the cameras could be used with no effect on the “integrity of the goalposts.”
Then it was a matter of figuring out the best angles for the cameras, on which CBS consulted its kicking analyst, former Giant and Jet Jay Feely.
The 4K cameras will be positioned not only to get shots of field goals and extra-point kicks but also images from the field of play.
“We're not reliant on just doinks,” Cohen said. “Obviously, if we've got a doink we’ll be very excited and probably high-fiving each other in the [production] truck. But they can also get other shots from the field from that unique perspective.”
As with all extra technical touches for a Super Bowl, the goal will be to use the cameras when it makes sense rather than simply because they are there.
“It's all about the storytelling,” Bryant said. “We're not going to force in the elements. We're going to find out what works to help tell the story of the game, the story of the moment.”
CBS PRODUCTION BY THE NUMBERS
Total cameras: 165
Cameras with 4K zoom extraction capability: 24
“Doink” cameras on uprights: 6
Robotic cameras: 24
Cameras embedded in end zone pylons: 20
Augmented reality cameras: 23
Skycams/flycams: 5
Drones: 3
Depth-of-field cameras: 5
Sets (at Vegas Strip and stadium): 6
Replay machines: 49
Record/playback channels: 600+
Television mobile units: 19
The Taylor Swift-CBS cutaway conundrum
Taylor Swift at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. Credit: TNS/Tammy Ljungblad
Taylor Swift has become a polarizing subplot of this NFL season, in part because of the many television images of her cheering from stadium suites across America.
The people who choose such shots are in an awkward position, one that will peak when her favorite team, Kansas City, meets San Francisco in Super Bowl LVIII.
“I’m sure there are people, especially a lot of younger fans, that wish we would show her a lot more,” CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus said during a video news conference on Thursday.
“And maybe some of the older fans would like us to show her less. But I think we've done it in a way that has not been intrusive at all.”
The singer is among the most famous people in the world, and her romance with Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce has become a source of fascination that even has seeped into the political realm in a presidential election year.
It makes for delicate decision-making among TV executives and those who make calls in real time in the production truck during games, in CBS’ case producer Jim Rikhoff and director Mike Arnold.
“We try to do it organically,” Rikhoff said. “Sometimes we’ll try to establish her once and then as it weaves through the telecast, like any element.”
Rikhoff recalled Kelce having a big first half during an early visit from Swift, then trailing off in the second.
“I planned on showing her five times the whole game, and we ended up showing her six times in that [second] quarter,” he said. “The second half we showed her once.
“So I think I really tried to have it lean into what's going on on the field and how it plays there. I think we strike the right balance there. I think we don't overdo it. I think when it plays, we put it in there. I think we put her on an average of about 32 to 40 seconds a game.
“So obviously we’re never missing game action when she's on. I think it's been a nice complement. I think it's brought a lot of different viewers to football, NFL football, which I always think is a good thing.”
Said McManus, “I think we've struck the right balance and when she has been seen in our shows, as Jim said, it's been organic. Travis makes a great play or they score a touchdown. She's part of the overall ambiance of these NFL games and she will be, assuming she's there at the Super Bowl.”
During the AFC Championship Game in Baltimore, Taylor appeared to say “go away” while looking at an image of herself on a TV screen in her suite. That came during a particularly long look at her while CBS was promoting the upcoming Grammys.
“She’s just as big a personality as anybody in the world right now, and I think that's a great thing that she's at football games,” CBS analyst Tony Romo said.
“I think it just adds value. And I think our team does it the right way . . . It just comes out organically.”
SUPER BOWL DETAILS
TV network: CBS
Alternate broadcast: Nickelodeon
Streaming: Paramount+ will stream the CBS broadcast
National anthem: Reba McEntire
"America the Beautiful": Post Malone
"Lift Every Voice and Sing": Andra Day
Halftime show: Usher
CBS' Super Bowl pregame show sets sights on Vegas, baby
The on-air crew of "The NFL Today" on CBS, from left: Jonathan Jones, James Brown, Phil Simms, Bill Cowher, Nate Burleson and Boomer Esiason. Credit: CBS/Alex Barlow
There is a certain sameness to networks’ four-hour Super Bowl pregame shows, but CBS hopes to break some of that mold by leveraging an element that is brand new to the big game: Las Vegas.
“It’s kind of refreshing from my perspective as a producer,” said Drew Kaliski, who oversees the show. “I have a lot more avenues to go down in terms of presenting this Super Bowl to our audience.”
The show will begin on a set outside the famed Bellagio hotel and include features on local magicians, comedians, DJs and other entertainers in addition to the usual sitdowns with the coaches, quarterbacks and other star players.
“We really want to capture the essence of Las Vegas on this show,” Kaliski said. “This is an opportunity that we’ve never seen in past Super Bowls, coming to the city of Las Vegas . . . We’re really going to give the viewers a sense of what Las Vegas is all about.”
The origin of 'The NFL Today' and Brent Musburger's 'You Are Looking Live!'
Jim Nantz’s second-favorite television program is “The Andy Griffith Show,” age-appropriate for a guy born in 1959, about 18 months before it premiered.
No. 1 came along a bit later, in 1975, when he could fully appreciate it and have it help launch him on his eventual career path.
“’The NFL Today’ with Brent [Musburger] is my favorite television show of all time, just edging out ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’” Nantz said recently. “Brent, thanks for being the Sheriff Andy Taylor in my life – the man who ran the town.”
Nantz and Musburger appeared on a video news conference with the other two men who have hosted “The NFL Today,” Greg Gumbel and James Brown, to promote an hourlong CBS documentary premiering on Super Bowl Sunday.
“You Are Looking Live!” will be shown at 1 p.m. and chronicle the groundbreaking pregame show. It originally starred Musburger, Phyllis George and Irv Cross and in its second season added Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder. Only Musburger survives.
There had been primitive pregame shows before, usually short and pre-recorded. Then CBS Sports executive Robert Wussler had an idea.
“He said, ‘Brent, can we do this live?’” Musburger recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t know why not.’”
Wussler, who died in 2010, later added Cross, whom Musburger knew well, and George, whom he did not, and the rest was sports media history.
“The key was Bob Wussler wanted pregame, halftime and postgame to be live, and that's how it came to be,” Musburger said.
The group meshed quickly. Musburger said he realized CBS was on to something when someone asked him for an autograph in a restaurant early that season.
“You never really never know what kind of an impact you are making,” he said.
Musburger said his trademark “you are looking live” line resulted from a gambling concern. A friend of the father of director Bob Fishman liked to bet on over/under lines. Seeing the weather shortly before kickoff could provide valuable clues.
“It was in November,” Musburger said. “The first one was probably Soldier Field with the Bears, and it was not a good day. So we just shot the one stadium, and then it went from there.
“The only thing that we insisted on is that they had to be live shots, and that's how we came up with, ‘You are looking live.’ It's all because somebody wanted to bet the over/under back in the day.”
Musburger, 84, now works for the gambling-oriented Vegas Stats & Information Network, which was founded by his family, and is a Raiders season ticket holder.
Recalling the long-ago battles with the NFL over Snyder’s on-air gambling advice, Musburger said, “I would not have believed back in the day in '75 if you had said to me, ‘Brent, the CBS gang is going to come to Las Vegas for Super Bowl LVIII.’ I would have laughed out loud back then. But how times have changed.”
CBS fired Musburger in 1990, but he will be honored by the network as it honors his most famous show.
“I think everyone who has ever hosted a studio show since Brent set the standard owes a great debt of gratitude to him,” Nantz said. “He's the greatest of all time. And that show led the way.”
Brown said, “Brent Musburger clearly is the one who laid the foundation for all of us. He was the standard bearer and still is. As I hear that [theme] music, one can't hear that without seeing the face of Brent Musburger in our eyes.”
“If you think about it closely, if you liked our broadcast and you said, ‘Wow, I love Jim Nantz and Tony Romo,’ and you said that on there on your tweet, are you going to keep doing that every week, or would that make you look a little silly?
-- Tony Romo on recent criticisms of his broadcast
The SpongeBob SquarePants Super Bowl broadcast on Nickelodeon
On CBS, it will be the first Super Bowl played in Las Vegas. On Nickelodeon, it will be the first Super Bowl played in Bikini Bottom.
“It’s going to blow people away when they see what we’ve done with the stadium,” Shawn Robbins, coordinating producer of Super Bowl LVIII on Nickelodeon, said on a video news conference on Thursday. “People are just going to be wowed by the whole thing.”
Nickelodeon has produced alternate coverage of CBS games before, receiving positive reaction from children and the adults who watch football with them.
But this will be the first time the sister channels have done it for a Super Bowl, and Nick is not holding back.
In addition to play-by-play man Noah Eagle and analyst Nate Burleson, the stars will be figures from “SpongeBob SquarePants,” a show that has been around long enough to have cross-generational appeal.
Mr. SquarePants lives in a pineapple under the sea in Bikini Bottom, and Allegiant Stadium will be made to look like it exists there through graphic wizardry.
The Nick production mostly will use CBS Sports’ cameras but will have 12 of its own, in addition to, as Robbins put it, “layers and layers of [augmented reality].”
Joining Eagle and Burleson in the booth will be SpongeBob and his friend Patrick Star, long voiced by Tom Kenny and Bill Fagerbakke.
“We’re bringing the entire game down to Bikini Bottom,” Nickelodeon vice president Jennifer Bryson said. “So while all of the action on the field will remain the real players, everything around the field will be in Bikini Bottom.”
Robbins said the goal is a “co-viewing experience” that adults and children can watch together while serving both audiences.
“We’ve got a lot of tricks up our sleeve and a lot of fun moments that we're going to bring to the game while obviously still celebrating the game and what's going on,” Bryson said.
Bryson said SpongeBob and Patrick will “ask the questions that a kid would ask while watching the game.”
Sandy Cheeks will report from the sideline and Larry the Lobster will provide live commentary. Dora the Explorer and Boots will explain penalty calls.
In some ways it’s been five years since we did a normal Super Bowl.”
- Jim Nantz
Busy day for Nate Burleson
Nate Burleson’s co-workers in less than 24 hours Sunday and Monday will range from Phil Simms to SpongeBob SquarePants to Gayle King.
That is how it is when you work as a studio analyst for “The NFL Today,” a game analyst for Nickelodeon’s alternate coverage of the Super Bowl and a host of the “CBS Mornings” news program.
Burleson called the three jobs “the most fulfilling” he ever has had, but to do them he has turned down all Super Bowl-week parties and appearances, and for the first time in his life has scheduled naps.
Nate Burleson Credit: Getty Images/Arturo Holmes
Sunday, he will work with CBS’ studio team pregame, at halftime and postgame while during the game calling the Nickelodeon broadcast with Ian Eagle, SpongeBob and SpongeBob’s starfish friend, Patrick.
“As soon as we are done [with the pregame show], I have to hop into the phone booth like Superman and change my outfit and be more kid appropriate,” he said.
Come Monday, he will be up before dawn in Las Vegas for “CBS Mornings.”
“Hopefully, fingers crossed, we’ll be able to land a player or coach,” he said. “It’s going to be tough to convince somebody who’s just been out partying all night to wake up at 3 in the morning for an early morning hit.”
As for Sunday’s dual roles, he said, “I’m definitely going to have to learn how to turn it off and turn it on as I’m jumping from booth to booth.
“One of my worst fears would be if I forget what set I’m on and joining the big fellas on ‘The NFL Today’ saying, ‘Hey, give a shout-out to SpongeBob!’ And J.J. [Watt] looks at me like, ‘Bro, not here. Wrong booth.’
“That’s pretty much the worst thing that can happen, but I’m pretty sure the crew will make fun of me and we’ll move on. But it’s fun.
“It’s somewhat challenging. As much as CBS has been preparing for the Super Bowl, I have been preparing for this week knowing that it’s going to come and it’s going to be one of the busiest weeks of my life . . . It’s going to be a long day but a fun day, and I’m going to leave my fingerprints on the game as much as I can.”
Asked whether it is more impressive to work with fellow analysts Phil Simms and Boomer Esiason or SpongeBob, Burleson said, “I’ll tell you what, Phil Simms and Boomer, they go at each other like SpongeBob and Patrick, so it’s equally as entertaining.”
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
