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The San Francisco 49ers host the Indianapolis Colts in Week 3, and with CBS broadcasting the game, they are sending out their top announcing team. Jim Nantz and Phil Simms will be calling the game. They are not my favorite pair, but their presence means this will be the CBS national game. The 1:25 p.m. PT game won't appear in every television market, but it will be in a lot of them. We'll update the television market information when 506sports.com puts together their broadcast maps. Fooch's Update: 506sports.com has updated with this week's maps.
The only real alternative this week would have been Texans-Ravens. While that is a good matchup, it does not have the background 49ers-Colts brings to the table. Aside from this being an inter-conference matchup of two playoff teams from last season, it features the compelling reunion of Jim Harbaugh and Andrew Luck (and of course, Coby Fleener, as well!).
While the Harbaugh-Luck storyline will probably get played out pretty quickly, it's still a fascinating story. Although plenty of people deserve credit for Stanford's current status among the top programs in the nation, Harbaugh and Luck deserve as much credit as anybody. They helped build a strong recruiting base, and turned Stanford into a perennial BCS contender.
I imagine CBS will have a pre-game feature on the relationship, and Nantz and Simms will have plenty to say about it. Given the fact that these two teams have not squared off since 2009, there really hasn't been much chatter about Harbaugh and Luck. CBS will make up for that plenty on Sunday.