SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Big weekend for sports fans - Super Bowl Sunday and the Winter Olympics. Guiding us through all of it will be one of America's best-known voices.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MIKE TIRICO: Here we go. Fourth and four. The in motion. Williams, sprinting - sprinting for space. In all kinds of trouble. Put it up for grabs in the end zone. He got it - for the touchdown.
(CHEERING)
TIRICO: They've done it again.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Laughter).
TIRICO: Unbelievable.
SIMON: But we believed it because we saw it, and Mike Tirico called it. Mike Tirico will call his first Super Bowl on Sunday, and just as the game wraps up, he will slide into hosting NBC's Olympics coverage. We spoke with Mike Tirico, we should say, before the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Savannah Guthrie, who was scheduled to be one of Mike's co-hosts. The voice of NBC Sports began in public broadcasting.
TIRICO: An honor to be with you, Scott, as somebody whose career started at an NPR station in Syracuse, New York. It is an honor to actually share the air with you as partners here, as opposed to leading into your wonderful voice.
SIMON: Aw, well, thank you. Well, the honor is ours. And you were the first Bob Costas scholar at Syracuse.
TIRICO: I was. I was. Bob Costas and Marv Albert, two sportscasting icons, both were Syracuse students and alums, and that was the reason that I ended up going as a first-generation college student from Queens, New York. Bob gave some money back to the university. I was the first Costas scholar and have maintained a friendship of some 35 years since then, and he's just the best.
SIMON: Listen, doing (laughter) the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics in one fell swoop, do you at least get time-and-a-half for a double shift?
TIRICO: Yes. Weekend pay, yes, absolutely. And then, you know, if the game goes overtime, there's more to make. No. It's - you know, sometimes, Scott, people say, I would do it for free. I would do this for free. It's a life's work to be involved in sports and sports journalism and the chance to join the dozen others who have called the Super Bowl on network TV is a thrill, and there's a limited number of folks who've done the primetime Olympics. But to do both in one day, it's such a big dream, Scott. You never got to this dream. You always woke up way before you started dreaming of something this ridiculous.
SIMON: Yeah. How do you prepare for it? Super Bowl, like, obviously, takes a lot of preparation. The Winter Olympics, you have to pronounce all those the names of the skiers correctly.
TIRICO: The skiers, the towns, all of the above. You know, I love to prepare. My comfort, the thing that keeps me from getting, quote, unquote, "nervous" is preparation. So you go back to last March, where I went to the World Figure Skating Championships held in Boston so I could be around all the figure skating folks that we're going to see at the Olympics. You go back four years and you know the times you've talked to Lindsey Vonn between then and now. And with the football, every week for the last 22 weeks we're deep in it, covering the games and covering these teams. So it just becomes a continuation of your year's work.
SIMON: Growing up in Queens, were you the kind of kid who would announce plays, you know, imitating announcers while playing ball with your buds?
TIRICO: Yes. Guilty as charged. You ask my mom, and she'll tell you that I was walking around pretending to be a sportscaster. And I think, Scott, when I got to the point that I tried to become an athlete and be that baseball player I always dreamed of, the baseball player I watched when the Mets played at old Shea Stadium, which no longer stands, when I came to the reality that in high school, my best option was going to be a defensive replacement or a pinch runner, the dream died. So I had two options. It was stay involved in sports in medicine or journalism. That sent me down the path to Syracuse, and here we are some 40 years later, still waking up loving what I do every single day.
SIMON: And I have to ask, since, of course, you're doing the Winter Olympics, crying up in Queens, what was your favorite winter sport, watching the skaters at Rockefeller Center?
TIRICO: (Laughter) Yeah, or maybe getting a snow day every once in a while. That's the funny part. I'm terrible at skis and skates and all those things. And that's part of my love of the Winter Olympics. When we see ice and snow, people try to stay off of it. Winter Olympians put metal things on the bottom of their feet and try to do it faster.
SIMON: (Laughter).
TIRICO: It's just extraordinary. And I think the only Winter Olympic sport that I'm qualified for is curling. I can sweep. I can sweep really well.
SIMON: Oh. And that's such an...
TIRICO: (Laughter).
SIMON: You know, I was about to say it's such an exciting sport. It is actually kind of an exciting sport...
TIRICO: It is.
SIMON: ...Isn't it? Yeah.
TIRICO: It is. I would highly urge anybody, if you have friends, and you know of a curling club in your area, go. It is a blast. You have some beers, if you are so inclined, and you learn from some folks who do it, and it's a great group exercise. Highly recommended. If you haven't done it, try it.
SIMON: And another Super Bowl question. Do you get to enjoy the halftime show, Bad Bunny, or you got to work?
TIRICO: So I normally would. The problem this time for me is that's my window to make sure all of our ducks in a row - to use the cliche - for the Olympic broadcast that comes on right after. So I'm going to take my headset off, clear my head for a minute after the first half, start thinking about what we want to talk about when we come back for the second half. And then I'm going to duck to the back of the booth and do about seven or eight minutes with our Olympic producer by phone and just make sure that we are all set, lined up and ready to go for that broadcast because when I get down to the field, we're going to hit the ground running. Let's do an hour and a half of hosting the Olympics.
SIMON: So many changes in broadcasting, how is it that live sports remains what amounts to the undisputed king of ratings?
TIRICO: You hit a spot that I'm very passionate about. And can I give you an anecdote to set up the why?
SIMON: Please.
TIRICO: So Hurricane Katrina hits in 2005, and in 2006, the New Orleans Saints return. They play the Atlanta Falcons week three on "Monday Night Football." It's my first year doing Monday night on ESPN. And that was the signal from New Orleans to the world, we're open for business again. And we can smile and have a good time. We're resilient, and we're going to come back despite what happened in the Lower Ninth and the devastation at Katrina. And that night, or maybe after that, what I've thought about it, it hit me, sports bring people together in a different way.
New Orleans has great restaurants and theater and opera and classical music. But nobody runs around wearing New Orleans on their tuxedo or their dress, right? But the Saints do. And there's civic pride. And I think, Scott, if you look at a section of a game at almost any sporting event, you're going to see most of the boxes on the old census form represented by gender and religion and all the other stuff we often fight and divide us at times. I think sports brings us together in a unique way, and we love to experience that with people because you can put aside your differences for however long that game is and be on the same team. And I think deep down in our souls, we like that as humans, as Americans.
SIMON: Mike, I'm going to be spending a lot of time with you this weekend (laughter).
TIRICO: Well, thank you. You and a hundred other million people are more than welcome. I hope the seat is comfortable, the nachos are exactly the way you like them and whatever the beverage of choice is, it's there. I'm just sorry the Bears aren't with us, Scott.
SIMON: Oh, well.
TIRICO: (Laughter).
SIMON: You bring up a sore point, but that's all right. Mike Tirico of NBC Sports. Thanks so much. Good luck.
TIRICO: Pleasure and honor to be with you, sir. A longtime fan. Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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