When you’re chasing the next big assignments, it can be easy to forget to totally appreciate the big moments.
Mike Tirico, nearly four decades into his career, has stopped chasing and has started appreciating — especially this year, which wasn’t just a banner year for this sports broadcaster, but for any sports broadcaster.
Tirico, the lead announcer for NBC Sports, made history in February when he became the first broadcaster to call the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics in the same year. For good measure, he did it on the same day. The experience was a whirlwind. It was also a heck of a lot of fun.
“I think I got more of an appreciation of it as I’ve gotten older, and this year I certainly was able to enjoy it while it was happening as much as I ever have in my career,” said Tirico, 59, during some rare downtime recently, between assignments calling the NBA’s Western Conference finals and working golf’s U.S. Open this week. “I guess you’re chasing — I don’t want to say a dream, but you’re working hard to get the next assignment, right? And you’re working hard to prove yourself in a different place, whether it’s following Bob Costas hosting the Olympics or doing ‘Sunday Night Football,’ or any of the stuff that I’ve been lucky to do.
“And at some point, you’ve gotten past that first layer of it, and now you can enjoy it. Now you’re established. Now you’re not trying to prove yourself.
“And, for me, I think that was a big part of the ability to enjoy everything that happened this year.”
In a year full of highlights for Tirico, two days stood above the rest — Feb. 8, when he called the Seattle Seahawks’ 29-13 victory over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, Calif. He then did NBC’s Olympics show from Levi’s Stadium, before rushing back to the hotel and then to the plane for his two weeks of on-site coverage of the Milano Cortina Winter Games in Italy. He landed there Feb. 9.
Tirico, a New York native and Syracuse University graduate who’s been a resident of southeast Michigan since 1999, has been named a Detroit News Michiganian of the Year, the latest pinch-me moment of 2025-26 for Tirico, who added to his haul of seven career Sports Emmys, was named to the TIME100 list of the most influential people in sports, and even got to deliver the commencement speech at his alma mater.
Along the way, Tirico earned near-universal rave reviews for his work on the air, with the Boston Globe praising his “easygoing, effortless eloquence,” and the Associated Press writing, “The more Tirico the better.”
Of all the words that have been said and written about Tirico this past year, it was the words of Rob Hyland, his coordinating producer on “Sunday Night Football” and for the Super Bowl that might’ve resonated most.
“Rob called me, maybe the week before the Super Bowl, before we traveled out to San Francisco,” Tirico said. “We’d both worked on it in different networks and different places, and he was producing for the first time, and he said, ‘Hey, let’s just make sure that we enjoy our experience and we don’t crowd it with nerves or trying to get every last thing done. Let’s just make sure that we find a way to enjoy the experience of doing it,’ and that kind of set the tone for me for that whole few weeks of the Super Bowl and the Olympics. And I really did. I took in the experience. I enjoyed it. I probably took more pictures than I ever did at a football game.”
Tirico is about to celebrate his 10-year anniversary with NBC Sports, having joined the network in July 2016, after 25 years at ESPN. He made that move in large part because it opened up a pathway toward being host of the Olympics, succeeding the legendary Costas.
It also put him in line one day to be the lead TV voice for the Super Bowl, which rotates among the networks. The February 2026 game was NBC’s, and it was Tirico’s. He became just the 13th man to do play-by-play for the Super Bowl on American network television, joining the likes of Pat Summerall, Jim Nantz, Al Michaels, Joe Buck, Greg Gumbel, Curt Gowdy and late Michigan native Dick Enberg.
Tirico has worked on Super Bowls before, but never as the lead guy, and never with 125 million people watching.
“I really felt at peace. It felt like a really enjoyable, calm day,” said Tirico, who began his Super Bowl Sunday well before sunrise, waking up to watch Lindsey Vonn’s ski run (and crash), before making his way over to the stadium. “And I did something I usually don’t do. I just walked out on the field for about 15 minutes way before I normally do. … It was really quiet and peaceful, and that just settled me.
“I shockingly was not nervous.”
Preparation helps ease those nerves, to be sure. Tirico, like the best sports broadcasters, is obsessively prepared, thanks to a large and trusted group of colleagues. Few events require the level of preparation as the Olympics, with so many events, so many story lines — and so much airtime to fill.
Tirico also has been the lead voice for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” for four seasons, and this year, with NBC getting the rights to the NBA, he was the network’s lead voice for “NBA on NBC,” including the San Antonio Spurs’ seven-game victory over the defending-champion Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference finals (the most-watched NBA conference finals in more than 20 years).
Tirico also hosts NBC’s coverage of the Kentucky Derby, as well as golf’s U.S. Open and British Open. He’s called just about everything there is to call at this point, with one notable exception. He has never called a baseball game, and he’d like to do so at some point. It’s a good bet to happen someday, with NBC again broadcasting prime-time Major League Baseball games. (Tigers TV man Jason Benetti, a friend of Tirico’s, was tapped to lead NBC’s “Sunday Night Baseball.”) Tirico is a big baseball fan and has been a Tigers season ticket-holder since Comerica Park opened in 2000. Calling a baseball game would be great. But if it doesn’t happen, that’s OK, too.
He’s done chasing the next assignment. He’s appreciating all the ones he’s had throughout the years — and especially the ones he had on one memorable day in February.
“I’m way beyond things I dreamed of doing, because I would wake up way before I got to the point where I would say, ‘Yeah, you’ll get to do the Super Bowl and host the Olympics’ in the same day, let alone the same year or lifetime,” Tirico said. “I knew that stretch was going to be busy … we knew it was coming.
“I never thought it would be this much fun.”
Mike Tirico
Age: 59
Occupation: Lead broadcaster for NBC Sports’ marquee events
Family: Wife Debbie, son Jordan and daughter Cammi
Education: Syracuse University, bachelor of broadcast journalism and political science
Why honored: For becoming the 13th man to do play-by-play for the Super Bowl on American television and the first broadcaster to call a Super Bowl and host the Winter Olympics the same year. He is one of two broadcasters to win Sports Emmys in both the play-by-play and host categories (joining Bob Costas). This month, he was named to the inaugural TIME100 list of the most influential people in sports.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Mike Tirico called the biggest games, and soaked them in, for a change
Reporting by Tony Paul, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Tony Paul, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
