Mike Tirico Officially Takes Over NBC’s ‘Sunday Night Football’ Play by Play
NBC’s Sunday Night Football will have a new — albeit familiar — voice next season.
Mike Tirico will officially take over as play by play announcer for the network’s primetime showcase, an NBC Sports spokesperson confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. The veteran sportscaster, who has called a handful of SNF games in the past few years, had been widely expected to take the job following Al Michaels’ decision to exit NBC after his contract expired.
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Tirico will join long-time Sunday Night Football analyst Cris Collinsworth in the booth.
“When Mike joined NBC Sports in 2016, it was our plan for him to become our primetime Olympics host and the play-by-play voice of Sunday Night Football,” NBC Sports chairman Pete Bevacqua said in a statement. “We are excited to have Mike join Cris Collinsworth full-time in the booth this season.”
Tirico’s elevation is the latest of several big changes to the top announce teams for the networks that carry the NFL. On March 16, ESPN lured Joe Buck and Troy Aikman — who had worked together on Fox’s NFL showcase games for nearly 20 years — to Monday Night Football. Michaels, meanwhile, is likely to land at Amazon, which won exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football as part of the NFL’s massive, $110 billion media rights package announced in 2021.
Tirico joined NBC Sports in 2016 after a long tenure at ESPN, where among other duties, he was the Monday Night Football play by play announcer for 10 seasons. Early in his time there, he was suspended for three months following allegations of sexual harassment from several women.
“When we hired Mike in 2016, we were aware of the incidents from more than 25 years ago, which had been addressed in 1991-92 by ESPN, his employer at the time, and for which he has apologized,” an NBC Sports rep told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. “Mike has repeatedly assured us that this behavior is long in his past, and we have no evidence of anything to the contrary in his tenure at NBC Sports.”
Since coming to NBC, Tirico has been the primetime anchor for the Olympics and covered golf, Notre Dame football and horse racing in addition to his work on NFL games.
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