''CBS Arena Football'' is a TV program from

CBS Sports CBS Sports is the sports division of the American television network CBS. Its headquarters are in the CBS Building on W 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, with programs produced out of Studio 43 at the CBS Broadcast Center on W ...

that broadcast

Arena Football League The Arena Football League (AFL) was a professional arena football league in the United States. It was founded in 1986, but played its first official games in the 1987 season, making it the third longest-running professional football league in ...

games from

2013 File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fa ...

2018 File:2018 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea; Protests erupt following the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi; March for Our Lives protests take place across the Unit ...

.
/ref> As part of a two-year agreement, the

CBS Sports Network CBS Sports Network (a.k.a. CBSSN) is an American pay television network owned by the CBS Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Global. When it launched in 2002 as the National College Sports Network (later College Sports Television also known a ...

aired nineteen regular season games and two playoff games. When

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

aired

ArenaBowl XXVI ArenaBowl XXVI was the 26th edition of the championship in the Arena Football League. The National Conference champion Arizona Rattlers, defeated the American Conference champion Philadelphia Soul, 48–39. The game was played on August 17, 2013 ...

, it marked the first time since

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

that the league's finale aired on network television.

Coverage breakdown

Regular season CBSSN broadcast games were usually on Saturday nights. As the games were shown live, the start times were not uniform as with most football broadcast packages, but varied with the time zone in which the home team was located. This meant that the AFL may have appeared either prior to or following the CBSSN's featured

Major League Lacrosse Major League Lacrosse (MLL) was a men's field lacrosse league in the United States. The league's inaugural season was in 2001. Teams played anywhere from ten to 16 games in a summertime regular season. This was followed by a four-team playoff ...

game. For the

2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a s ...

season, one AFL game per week was broadcast live nationally over CBS Sports Network. In 2017, the AFL also began streaming some games on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

and AFLNow, the league's streaming service. For the

season, the AFL's sole national English language telecast partner was the CBS Sports Network, but all games were streamed free online and Brigade and Valor games were available over their owner

Ted Leonsis Theodore John Leonsis (born January 8, 1957) is an American businessman, investor, filmmaker, author, philanthropist, and former politician. He is a former senior executive with America Online (AOL), and the founder, chairman, and CEO of Monument ...

' Monumental Sports Network.

Former commentators

Sherdrick Bonner Sherdrick Deon "Sed" Bonner (born October 19, 1968) is a former American football quarterback who played fifteen seasons in the Arena Football League (AFL). High school years Bonner attended Azusa High School in Azusa, California and was a stude ...

(color commentator, now with

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

) *

Andrew Catalon Andrew Catalon (born September 7, 1979) is an American sportscaster. He has announced NFL on CBS, PGA Tour on CBS, College Basketball on CBS, NBA on CBS and NCAA March Madness. He has done play-by-play alongside James Lofton on National Football L ...

(play-by-play) * Randy Gatewood (sideline report) *

Anthony Herron Anthony Glenn Herron (born September 24, 1979) is an American football commentator and former defensive end. Originally from Bolingbrook, Illinois, Herron played college football at Iowa. Following the 2001 NFL Draft, Herron signed with the Detr ...

(color commentator, now with

) *

Ben Holden Ben Holden (born November 3, 1970 in Lansing, Michigan) is a sportscaster most recently with CBS Sports Network and has been with the Big Ten Network. Biography Holden called college football, basketball, and ice hockey for the CBS Sports Network ...

(play-by-play) * Steve Papin (sideline reporter) * Brent Stover (lead play-by-play) * Ari Wolfe (lead play-by-play, now with

)

References

External links

*
''AFL on CBS'' - ArenaFan.com
{{Arena Football on CBS CBS Sports Network original programming 2013 American television series debuts 2018 American television series endings

CBS original programming CBS Sports Spectacular CBS Sports