Brad Nessler apologized for dropping the phone in the middle of the interview. Van Brocklin, one of the three cats that he and his wife, Nancy, have in their Duluth, Ga., home, had jumped on Nessler's desk and startled him.

Yes, Van Brocklin. As in Norm Van Brocklin, the Hall of Fame football player. The Nessler family has a tradition of naming their felines after Hall of Famers — there's been a Butkus, a Nitschke, an Elway and a Lambert, among others. So it was fitting that Van Brocklin, whose namesake also was the first coach of the Vikings, interrupted his owner while he was talking Minnesota football.

Nessler, the lead play-by-play announcer for CBS on its Big Ten football broadcasts, is a native of St. Charles, Minn., about 25 miles east of Rochester. He will be back in his home state to call the Gophers vs. fourth-ranked Penn State on Saturday at Huntington Bank Stadium. It's Nessler's first Gophers home game since calling their 29-26 loss to Michigan on Oct. 31, 2015, on ESPN.

Nessler is looking forward to his Minnesota return, "especially after everybody's been sending me texts all day of the snow on their deck," he joked Wednesday. Nessler has been reunited with analyst Gary Danielson, his old ABC/ESPN partner going back to the 1990s, for CBS' first year with the 18-team Big Ten. "This is gonna be our first taste of Big Ten football in November," he said, pointing to Saturday's forecast of temperatures in the 30s.

Nessler's Minnesota roots run deep — from St. Charles to what was then called Mankato State College and to the Vikings as their radio voice in 1988 and '89. "When I got the Vikings job, my dad was busting buttons on his shirt, he was so proud," Nessler said.

From age 11 or 12, Nessler wanted to be a sportscaster, and he remembers the early days of calling high school games in the Mankato area when he was his own, "producer, engineer, spotter and stats guy. I had to try to climb a telephone pole to plug in a phone line," he said. "This is crazy, and I'm making 50 bucks on a Friday night when I should be wooing my future wife at the time."

His early influences included a who's who of Minnesota-based talent in the field: Ray Christensen, Ray Scott, Herb Carneal and Halsey Hall. His first major network role came in 1990, when he worked NFL, college football and college basketball games for CBS.

Nessler is known for his work on SEC games for CBS, and the transition to the Big Ten has been a homecoming of sorts. He's renewed friendships from more than 30 years ago when ABC/ESPN had the Big Ten's rights.

"It's kind of like 'Back to the Future' for Gary and me," Nessler said. "We started together in '92 at ESPN and the Big Ten was our territory. When we came back this year, we've seen so many old friends. … A lot of the relationships you make, they don't go away."

As for Saturday's game, Nessler is impressed with what he's seen from the Gophers, especially with their shift from a run-heavy offense to one that passes 53% of the time.

"Just doing my homework, and I'm like, 'Wow, I didn't even realize they threw it around this much,' " Nessler said. He pointed to losses to North Carolina and Rutgers as games that got away from them "or their record could be a lot better. … This is a little bit of a trap game [for Penn State] when you look at it. They better be careful in Minneapolis because it happened in 2019."

Playoff, bowl projections

A look at a weekly projection of the College Football Playoff field and the bowl matchups involving Big Ten teams. The projections use predicted outcomes, not current rankings:

College Football Playoff

First round, Dec. 20-21

No. 9 Indiana at No. 8 Georgia

No. 12 Colorado at No. 5 Oregon

No. 10 Ole Miss at No. 7 Notre Dame

No. 11 Tennessee at No. 6 Penn State

Quarterfinals

Fiesta Bowl (Dec. 31): Colorado-Oregon winner vs. No. 4 Boise State

Peach Bowl (Jan. 1): Tennessee-Penn State winner vs. No. 3 Miami (Fla.)

Sugar Bowl (Jan. 1): Ole Miss-Notre Dame winner vs. No. 2 Texas

Rose Bowl (Jan. 1): Indiana-Georgia winner vs. No. 1 Ohio State

Semifinals

Orange Bowl (Jan. 9): Fiesta winner vs. Rose winner

Cotton Bowl (Jan. 10): Peach winner vs. Sugar winner

Championship

Jan. 20, Atlanta: Semifinal winners

Other Big Ten bowls

Citrus Bowl (Dec. 31, Orlando): Illinois vs. Alabama

ReliaQuest Bowl (Dec. 31, Tampa): Iowa vs. Texas A&M

Music City Bowl (Dec. 30, Nashville): Michigan vs. LSU

Duke's Mayo (Jan. 3, Charlotte): Gophers vs. Clemson

Pinstripe Bowl (Dec. 28, New York): Wisconsin vs. Pittsburgh

Rate Bowl (Dec. 26, Phoenix): Nebraska vs. Texas Tech

GameAbove Sports Bowl (Dec. 26, Detroit): Rutgers vs. Miami (Ohio)

Sun Bowl (Dec. 31, El Paso): USC vs. Duke

LA Bowl (Dec. 18, Inglewood, Calif.): Washington vs. UNLV