HE'S BETTER THAN NEUROSURGEONS. TAKE THAT, BRAIN NERDS.
Chris Fowler is the best person at his job at anything in any profession, and this includes neurosurgery. You say, oh, that's a difficult thing to prove, because neurosurgery is really hard, but we ask this: has Chris Fowler left a body on the table recently, shrugging his shoulders and saying, "I dunno, it's a brain, shit happens"?* The answer is no, and that means his failure rate is way better than yours, Mr. Smartass I-Spent-Fifteen-Years-In-College.
*Lou Holtz, however, has, and it's a matter of ongoing litigation.
Fowler could finish his career at ESPN after signing a nine year deal extended through 2023, and will not only host Gameday this season, but also double up by taking the prime Saturday night spot for ABC's marquee matchup. This is a good thing for several reasons, the foremost being Fowler's talent as a play-by-play man. Anyone who watches Thursday night games with the abandon of a life-avoiding fiend knows he calls games exactly like he works Gameday: with fearsome research, a light touch on patter, and the easy hand of a coordinator between the broadcast, his producers, and his on-air partners. You hardly notice he's there until you want him to get loud, which he does happily before fading back into information mode.*
*As a pivot point for a broadcast, only Ernie Johnson, Jr. might be better, albeit under very different circumstances as Chuck-wrangler. He's disgustingly good at his job, and watching just a few minutes of The NBA on TNT confirms it every night during the playoffs. Apropos of nothing, he's also a freakishly nice person in real life.
That last bit about getting loud might be the most important, because Chris Fowler also still manages to pull off the hardest trick of them all after all these years: he seems like he enjoys not only his job, but what is happening on the field. That's an important difference to make between him and Musburger, who clearly enjoyed the job of being Brent Musburger, but wasn't always the most interested in the particulars of the live game. We have no idea how, but Fowler still conveys a real joy in the thing beheld while also doing his job. That's no small feat in any context.
Maybe it's that we also remember him looking like everyone else at the end of Texas/Texas Tech 2008, too. Whatever. We're glad he's going to be around, is the point, to feel the pain of fans everywhere, including Clemson fans. Especially Clemson fans, actually.