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Mike Tirico arrives at Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium in late December only to find something that has been in short supply in his life in recent months: a little time to himself.
In just a few hours, fans will stream into the venue to watch the Baltimore Ravens take on the New England Patriots. But Tirico, who has become NBC’s flagship sports personality, thanks in part to his mellow voice, easy disposition and focus on calling action instead of hot takes, is soaking up the silence. The field is empty and the pregame festivities have yet to start, so Tirico takes advantage of the moment to sit in NBC’s tiny broadcast booth and prepare for his upcoming play-by-play. There are stats to keep in mind, players to get familiar with and storylines to learn by heart.
“You can always cram, but I’d rather have a plan,” says Tirico, who’s facing the start of an intense schedule. Two days ago, he was sitting at NBC Sports headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, hashing out details with the Olympics production team about how he would handle a looming juggle: On Feb. 8, Tirico will offer up play-by-play for NBC’s telecast of Super Bowl LX and, immediately afterward, anchor the network’s after-game coverage of the Olympics. The assignment, says the 59-year-old Tirico, represents “the biggest day of my professional life.”
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Tirico is fast becoming the new face of NBC, as the onetime home of “ER,” Friends” and “Seinfeld” goes all-in on live sports and events with its investments in TV rights for both the NBA and Major League Baseball. NBC, known for “Sunday Night Football,” will now have one major sport or another on Sunday evenings across the whole year. Tirico is one of very few sportscasters who can handle all that NBC is asking of him, which now includes NBA games and annual coverage of the Kentucky Derby.
While sportscasters like Tirico have long been popular, they haven’t had the kind of widespread, everyday presence of late-night hosts or morning anchors. That’s changing: Sports are TV’s last sure thing, a programming format that can still draw the broad crowds for which advertisers are willing to pay big bucks. Tirico and others are now the networks’ new ambassadors, on air for some of TV’s most dramatic moments. At the same time, the job requires road-warrior grit and a tolerance for logistical extremes.
Still, things can get away from Tirico. For instance, he arrives a few minutes late for our interview, having been engrossed in a Saturday-afternoon college game. “I lost track of time watching Texas A&M-Miami,” he confesses. “Nobody can score a touchdown in this big college football playoff game, brother. And I’ve got no professional need to pay attention to the game, but I’m captivated by it still.”
More of his attention has been on the coming Super Bowl-to-Olympics transfer. During Big Game halftime, when most fans will be watching Bad Bunny, Tirico will be figuring out if he’ll need to focus more on Lindsey Vonn, the championship ski racer attempting a comeback at 41, or other sports stars. After the Super Bowl ends, Tirico must execute a tightly controlled 10-minute maneuver that gets him out of the broadcast booth at Levi’s Stadium and onto the field, where he can pivot from end-of-game analysis to Olympics scene-setting.
The Super Bowl telecast is TV’s most-watched night of the year, and Tirico will have to keep viewers riveted for nearly six hours while cajoling them to stick around for coverage from Milan. Is anyone worried?
“Mike is a unicorn,” says Rob Hyland, the executive producer of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.” He’s talking about Tirico’s superhuman ability to toggle between important assignments. “I’ve never met anyone like him, and I don’t know if I’ll ever meet anyone like him again.”
NBC and other networks are on the hunt for crowd-pleasers like Tirico, because the stakes could not be higher. NBC has sought anywhere from $7 million to $10 million for a 30-second ad in this year’s Super Bowl, according to people familiar with talks between the network and Madison Avenue. And yet, as much money as the games generate, they cost even more. NBC-Universal is shelling out an estimated $2 billion annually for NFL rights and $2.5 billion each year to carry NBA games. The Comcast-backed company recently agreed to pay $3 billion to keep the Olympics through 2036. Paramount Skydance said in August that it would pay $7.7 billion over seven years to become the exclusive home of UFC matches in the U.S. TV outlets are scrambling for volleyball and professional wrestling and are even investing in new leagues they can own. So the current economics of TV sports are too expensive to leave in the hands of someone viewers won’t embrace.
“The competition across all of these broadcast networks and streaming services is so intense that it’s really important for sports media networks to acquire the best talent across the board,” says Matt Kramer, co-head of the group that represents sports talent at CAA. “As the rights fees grow, networks are really relying more on familiar credible voices and hosts. They can help audiences navigate the complex sports world.”
As a kid, Tirico didn’t see himself appearing on “Today” or with Jimmy Fallon on NBC’s “Tonight” — gigs that have become more commonplace as NBC pivots more decisively toward sports. He was what he calls a “concrete kid,” growing up with a single mother in Queens. He dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player, but as he got older, he realized his on-the-field abilities weren’t likely to take him to the big leagues. Instead, he looked at a different kind of sports figure. “I would gravitate towards wanting to meet sportscasters as opposed to athletes,” he recalls. When he learned that legendary commentator Marv Albert attended Syracuse University, he followed suit. His first job was at Syracuse’s WAER, and his first guest was Bob Costas.
Eventually, Tirico landed at ESPN, where he enjoyed a 25-year career calling golf, “Monday Night Football” and more. He joined NBC Sports in 2016, and the plan was to have him gradually move into Olympics and football coverage as luminaries like Costas and Al Michaels stepped back. But the company’s growing sports focus meant that “America is seeing more of Mike Tirico,” according to Sandy Montag, the veteran sports agent who works with Tirico.
Though sports is perhaps the most tribal of pastimes, with fans rooting for their favorite team to demolish someone else’s, it “still has a great uniting ability at a time when everything is more fractured,” Tirico says. “If you can develop some consistent trust by the viewer in your ability to do the job, then I think it will only make sense to engage in the other platforms for the company. I think that’s a place we are going. But I don’t think any of us thought we’d see sports become this much of primetime TV real estate.”
Others are also being called upon to serve in a broader fashion. Tirico’s NBC colleague Maria Taylor hosts the lead-in show for both NFL and NBA games on Sundays. At ESPN, Malika Andrews, assigned to a top role with the Disney outlet’s NBA coverage at a young age, recently expanded her portfolio and will handle tennis as well. Netflix recently hired Elle Duncan, an ESPN veteran, to lead all its live sports coverage, which encompasses NFL games on Christmas Day but also a stunt event that had climber Alex Honnold scaling the tallest building in Taiwan. Less established personalities are also working hard. Katie Feeney, who was hired by ESPN in August to create content for its social and digital outlets, can often be spotted traveling to events around the country.
Kirk Herbstreit, who enjoys prominent roles with both ESPN and Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football” coverage, has a particularly gnarly schedule. The veteran is part of ESPN’s popular three-hour “College GameDay” pre-show on Saturday afternoons and often arrives on location Fridays so he can meet with fans. After the Saturday show, he typically boards a private plane so he can get to the game slated for telecast Saturday night and offer play-by-play. Then it’s back to work for Amazon, preparing for the Thursday game the company streams each week. “To do that within a 72-hour window is pretty unprecedented in the history of the industry,” Herbstreit says of his weekend schedule. “It’s pretty taxing. Thankfully, I have adrenaline. I have a passion for what I do.”
Even the basics are challenging. “There are 100 and more players and coaches you’re supposed to know something about,” says Cris Collinsworth, who has stood alongside Costas and Michaels over more than a decade and a half of “Sunday Night Football” duties. “I’m in full panic at all times about what I don’t know. There’s always something else.”
The physical demands of sportscasting sometimes pale in comparison with the beating sportscasters take online. Fans are prone to lash out for the use of the wrong verb or stat or what they think is an off take. CBS Sports’ Tony Romo and Fox Sports’ Tom Brady often get digital dissections from sports fans who analyze every action and phrase on Sunday afternoons. “You’re the dartboard, and everybody else has the darts,” says Collinsworth, who says he understands that “if you say the wrong thing at the wrong time, that may be your last game you ever do.”
The rise of online sports betting also threatens to change sportscasting. “Sportscasters will be expected to keep their eyes on this reality,” says Max Fuller, assistant professor of sports media at Ithaca College, “and it will likely continue to impact the narratives they utilize when broadcasting and creating content. While wagering and odds-making may be seen as ethically and morally dubious in some circles, it remains immensely popular, and its adoption by media outlets and organizations signals that it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”
How can the sideline reporter, the color commentator or the play-by-play announcer make sure everyone is interested?
Some fans may want more on the odds, says Tirico, “but you can’t overdo it, because people come to us for entertainment. You’re a thumb away from some good movie on Peacock or some show on another network, right? So we’ve got to entertain.” Tirico must “take the granular stuff and sift through it. What rises to a level that my mom would know or understand?”
Indeed, there’s a strong feeling that sports must appeal to all. “We’re a broadcast, not a narrowcast,” says Melissa Stark, the “Sunday Night Football” sideline reporter who spends days before each game seeking out stories she hopes will inspire audiences. Viewers are “looking for a reason to root for someone. Why am I rooting for this star? Why am I rooting for this player?”
Even with a young audience that watches highlights on their phone or calls up next-gen stats with a click of the remote, the big show must remain. Without three hours of “Sunday Night Football,” “the highlights don’t exist,” says Drew Esocoff, the veteran sports director who helps guide “Sunday Night Football” behind the scenes. “The core product has to happen, or all of the other things won’t show up. Viewers still react strongly to the great plays and the make-you-laugh moments. And I don’t think that’s ever going to change.”
When I catch up with Tirico in January on the floor of New York’s Madison Square Garden, he’s deep in the mix. He flew in on a red-eye from Chicago after calling a late-season “Sunday Night Football” game, and is about to call an NBC telecast of the New York Knicks squaring off against the Dallas Mavericks. Then he’s going to jump on a plane to Milan, part of a two-day sojourn to immerse himself in Olympics preparations. At some point, he’ll make it back home to his family in Michigan. In recent weeks, he’s been relying on Starbucks’ Medicine Ball. “It’s got two types of tea, a little bit of lemonade. I go light on the lemonade,” Tirico confides. “It has been an enlightening discovery in the last couple of months.”
Some people wonder if Tirico will add NBC’s new baseball schedule to his duties, but that seems unlikely. “I’ve never called a baseball game,” Tirico says. “At some point, I hope I get the chance to do one, but the plate is way too full right now.”
This busy job that puts him in front of millions of viewers throughout the year still offers a few pinch-me moments. Yes, there’s a lot of money at stake and pressure to succeed, but “I don’t get overwhelmed,” Tirico says. “We’re still getting to talk about sports at the end of the day, you know?”
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