INDIANAPOLIS – Gary Danielson still remembers the drive home from the Ohio State-Michigan game in 2002.
The Buckeyes won an instant classic 14-9 on a Will Allen interception that sent the eventual national champions to the Fiesta Bowl. Danielson was in the booth with Brent Musburger for The Game, but it was the talk radio he remembers for the first two hours of the drive home.
"Great game, way to go Buckeyes, but I can tell you one thing, Danielson is from Michigan."
Then Danielson crossed the Ohio state line into Michigan, and the tune changed. Sort of.
"What a traitor that Danielson is. That guy was born in Michigan."
Danielson – who played eight seasons with the Detroit Lions and three seasons with the Cleveland Browns in the NFL – realized at that point it might be difficult to make anybody happy.
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"It was Twitter before there was Twitter," Danielson said at Big Ten Media Days. "I was kind of smiling. That’s life in college football."
Danielson is back in the Big Ten as part of CBS' coverage this season. He will be in the booth with Brad Nessler and sideline reporter Jenny Dell's for Saturday's game between No. 3 Ohio State and Indiana.
It's a return home of sorts for the Detroit native who played at Purdue. Danielson has called SEC games for the network since 2006 – which coincided with that conference’s full-fledged takeover from the Bowl Championship Series to four-team College Football Playoff eras.
Now, Danielson becomes a leading voice of a conference that is still trying to catch the SEC on the field.
"No one has had a better job than me the last 34 years," Danielson said. "I’ve called top-level games, and since 1990 I’ve done over 500 games. I bet I haven’t done 50 that didn’t have national championships consequences or Big Ten consequences. I didn’t have to make up storylines. They were always there. To go back and to be able to finish my career in the Big Ten means the world to me."
It’s quite a role shift considering that Danielson’s time with the SEC coincided with the conference’s rise to prominence. Danielson said he didn’t know it at the time, but listening to Auburn players before the Sugar Bowl in 2004 was the start of that shift. The Tigers finished 13-0 that season, but they watched USC and Oklahoma play for the BCS championship.
"They were upset they couldn't get that next step up," Danielson said. "They felt they were playing great football but it was, 'Oh no, USC is better. Ohio State and Michigan are better.' No matter what they did they couldn't get the national media to recognize that they were good as the teams that they would say, ‘are on TV.’"
Imagine an unbeaten SEC team getting shut out of the CFP now. Florida beat Ohio State in the 2006 BCS championship game, which started a run in which the conference has won 13 of the last 16 national championships. Danielson was in the booth with Verne Lundquist until Brad Nessler replaced him in 2017.
Danielson enjoyed his time with the SEC – where he said being an "outsider" actually was helpful.
"I’ve never pretended that I was an SEC guy when I was doing the games," Danielson said. "I was calling football games. I couldn’t find The Grove if you paid me $1,000. I’ve never been there. I just stick to the X’s and O’s and do my job."
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Danielson has never been short on opinions, and he has a few of those as he enters the Big Ten booth. He said the key for the conference to catching the SEC is to have more teams competing for national championships. He looks at a team arriving in the conference in 2024 that could play a role in that.
"I think the most important team for this conference is USC," Danielson said. "They need one more team to make that argument that we’re as strong and we’re the strongest conference. I could see that happening. It’s a line, but with the elimination of divisions it probably will gravitate even more to the top."
Danielson also knows that means the conference must escape from the shadow of being known as The Big Two. Ohio State and Michigan have won the last six conference championships.
"If it’s just Michigan and Ohio State; I don’t know if that’s good for the conference," Danielson said. "Auburn won a national championship — and they could have easily won two. Tennessee won one. Everybody there has taken their swing at-bat and they measure their program's success by competing for national championships. Outside of Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State a little bit — they haven’t made that step — that’s really not the case."
Danielson knows those kinds of takes will strike nerves across the Rust Belt, but he’s been doing that in the SEC since 2006. It’s just a matter of switching conferences. He knows how that will go over on the modern version of Twitter. Should we say X?
"I understand Twitter and being critical," Danielson said. "It goes with the games I’m doing. These teams are from Ohio State to Alabama, these fans, when you say one word ... but I choose not to get into the rebuttal stuff."
Danielson pauses and smiles. He knows that's life in college football.
"I get my three-and-a-half hours," he said. "The fans get the rest."
