As expected, the folks at Showtime have relied primarily on talent from its sister network, CBS, to staff the Inside the NFL operation.

But one key figure from the CBS on-air lineup won’t be joining the new effort.

Per Michael Hiestand of USA Today, James Brown, who hosts The NFL Today on CBS, will also host the long-running weekly highlights show.  Joining him will be CBS lead game analyst Phil Simms.  And making the jump from HBO will be Cris Collinsworth.

Marino, who has been a mainstay on both CBS and Inside the NFL for several years, won’t be part of the new-look effort.

The decision will be announced on Monday by Sean McManus of CBS.  McManus tells Hiestand, “[W]e didn’t want to just have CBS people.  And we wanted a link to the HBO show.  It was a tough one, in respect to Dan, to go with Cris.”

There’s a chance that the show will add a fourth analyst, or possibly rotate the position among recently retired players (Brett Favre) and current players (Brett Favre?).

Our take is that the omission of Marino marks the beginning of the end of Marino’s career with CBS.  We know a thing or two about Western Pennsylvanians of Italian heritage, and our sense is that Dan simply won’t be able to get past the public dissing.  So he’ll ask his agent to begin to lay the foundation for a move to a new network as soon as his CBS contract expires.