NEW YORK (AP) — Mike Tirico called the NFL, NBA, college basketball, golf and tennis among other sports in a quarter-century at ESPN to establish himself as one of TV’s most versatile announcers.
One of the few events not on ESPN: the Olympics. NBC owns those rights through 2032, and now Tirico will be part of its coverage.
The Olympics were “right at the top of the list of things that made it impossible to turn away from this opportunity,” Tirico said on a conference call Monday formally announcing his move to NBC.
He’ll be in Rio this summer after he joins the network July 1. Details about all of Tirico’s assignments won’t be revealed until after he completes his ESPN contract at the end of June, NBC Sports executive producer Sam Flood said.
The network did say in a news release that Tirico, who is leaving behind the “Monday Night Football” play-by-play gig, would be involved in its Sunday and Thursday prime-time NFL broadcasts. NBC adds five Thursday games this fall, creating an immediate play-by-play opportunity there.
Shortly after NBC introduced Tirico, ESPN announced that Sean McDonough would replace him on “Monday Night Football.” John Wildhack, ESPN’s executive vice president for programming and production, said McDonough was atop a short list once Tirico decided to leave.
The 49-year-old Tirico emphasized that his NBC role is a long-term proposition. And while he and Flood didn’t want to get into specifics, the deal could eventually lead to the possibility of replacing Al Michaels on “Sunday Night Football” and Bob Costas as the Olympic host.
Tirico said he would have stayed at ESPN if not for the “championship-level events” NBC offers. NBC also is taking over coverage of the British Open this summer, and the network said Tirico’s responsibilities will include golf. Plus NBC is in the Super Bowl rotation, which ESPN isn’t.
McDonough was just 30 years old when he first called the World Series in 1992 for CBS. The network’s baseball contract ended after 1993, though, and while he has worked plenty of high-profile games since, McDonough acknowledged that “I always felt like there was that one next level to climb back up to.”
He had asked Wildhack in recent years whether that opportunity would come with ESPN, and Wildhack assured him it would. That finally happened two weeks ago when Wildhack called him about possibly joining Jon Gruden in the Monday night booth.
Jay Rothman, ESPN’s vice president for production, flew to meet with McDonough a few days later. The two had worked together on college basketball a quarter-century ago, and after they chatted for about three hours, Rothman gave McDonough a hug and told him the job was his.
McDonough warned him, “I’m going to have a little bit of a moment here,” because he started thinking about his late father, Will McDonough, a prominent NFL columnist and commentator.
The younger McDonough, who has mostly worked other sports in his career, had to collect himself for several seconds on a conference call Monday when asked to reflect on what it meant to ascend into such a high-profile NFL job.