CBS' college football coverage is about to change. Longtime analyst Gary Danielson has announced he plans to retire from broadcasting after the 2025 college football season. This will conclude 20 years of the company calling college football games.
CBS Sports announced on Wednesday that former Tennessee football player Charles Davis will succeed Danielson in his role. The new hire will primarily be for the Big Ten on CBS broadcasts.
Davis played for the Vols as a safety from 1983 to 1986. He earned two preseason All-American honors before his Junior and Senior seasons.
He was undrafted in the 1987 NFL Draft but signed with the Dallas Cowboys as an undrafted free agent. After spending the offseason and preseason in Dallas, he was cut ahead of the 1987 season, so he returned to Knoxville to earn his master's degree.
Davis spent the next decade holding a variety of jobs before finally landing his first broadcast job as a college football analyst with Fox Sports South in 1997.
He went on to work for CBS as a college basketball sideline reporter and a TBS college football analyst and landed at Fox Sports in 2006 as a college football analyst. He called the 2007 National Championship and primarily worked on Big Ten games and the Big Ten Network.
Davis has since called primarily NFL games for Fox and CBS and has also been featured in nearly a decade of Madden football games.
He is one of the best analysts in CBS' NFL lineup and will now return to college football as the No. 1 college football analyst calling games. CBS Sports President and CEO David Berson said Davis is one of the best analysts in the world of NFL and college football.
"For the past two decades, Charles has been among the best analysts across the NFL and college football," Berson said. "He's well known to fans, from calling college football national championships to NFL playoff games to the voice of 'Madden NFL.'"
Davis will undoubtedly thrive in this role as CBS Sports' premiere voice for college football. He will begin calling primetime games alongside Brad Nessler and Jenny Dell at the start of the 2026 college football season.