Gary Danielson is entering his final season of calling SEC games on CBS. ESPN and its networks will carry or stream all SEC games starting in the 2024-25 NCAA season.

Ahead of Georgia-South Carolina, his first “SEC on CBS” game of the 2023 season, Danielson spoke to media members. While CBS has been featuring Big Ten teams in the early season, the SEC has gotten off to a rough start against the other conferences.

Danielson was asked about the high-profile losses by LSU, Alabama and Texas A&M. He isn’t ready to call it a down year for the SEC, but did note that the conference’s chances of getting 2 teams into the College Football Playoff have been hurt by the early losses to teams from the ACC and Big 12.

“The emergence of Georgia now has given the conference strength, but it used to be that they’ve been able to hang their hat on those early September wins,” Danielson told reporters, per Marc Weizer of the Athens Banner-Herald. “These 3 losses are big. Three bell cow programs in this conference.”

After noting that Georgia had to scrap a scheduled game against Oklahoma that could have given the SEC a notable nonconference victory, Danielson wrapped up his answer by talking about the 4-team Playoff.

“Those automatic tiebreakers that used to go to the SEC at the end of the year and that argument for No. 4 will be a little harder for the SEC to say we’ve got this in the bag.”

The SEC most recently had 2 teams make the CFP in 2021 when Georgia defeated Alabama in the championship game. Last year’s field of 4 featured 2 teams from the Big Ten.