NBC Sports Boss Talks Wild Sports Stretch, Michael Jordan

SAN FRANCISCO — NBC Sports president Rick Cordella is overseeing a torrential stretch of sports on the network in the next few weeks: Super Bowl 60 in the Bay Area, the Winter Olympics in Italy, and the NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles. 

He joined Front Office Sports at our live set on Radio Row to discuss what type of staffing this parade requires, the status of Michael Jordan as a special contributor on NBA telecasts, and the decision to pick up Sunday Night Baseball.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Front Office Sports: You’re embarking on a huge year. Let’s start with the Olympics.

Rick Cordella: Yeah, the Friday opening ceremony is happening from Milan Cortina. Couldn’t be more excited about it. I think it might be one of the better winter opens we’ve had in recent memory, probably because Team USA is so strong this year. Obviously, Lindsey Vonn on Super Bowl Sunday, racing the downhill. She came out this morning, [and said] despite her ACL tear, she will give it a go. Give her a lot of credit for going through that pain and competing. But just overall, you have Ilia Malinin, who may be the greatest figure skater of all time, in terms of what he’s doing versus the competition, doing backflips on the ice. It’s gonna be exciting to see. 

You obviously also have USA Hockey, with Canada and their foreign policy coming into play, and maybe zhuzhing that up a little bit from what it normally is. And just overall, Team USA could go for the record number of medals that we saw back in Vancouver [in 2010]. So it’s going to be an exciting two weeks there in Milan.

FOS: We buried the lede. You also have the Super Bowl, NBA All-Star Game, and staffing up Sunday Night Baseball. You have five kids. How are you still standing? 

RC: I’ve got a great wife at home, first of all, taking care of the kids. So she, thankfully, is all good on that front. We had Sunday Night Basketball from Madison Square Garden just this past Sunday with Knicks-Lakers, and that was phenomenal in our first of the new deal of Sunday night, and having Lenny Kravitz come out. We’re really trying to treat that as if it’s Sunday Night Football, just in the basketball arena. And then we’ll take that forward to baseball when we have that later on this spring. But there’s a lot going on. 

I’m incredibly lucky to have just a phenomenal, phenomenal team of professionals that really are dedicated to their craft, that do what they do. And to some degree, these folks are sort of compartmentalized. So we have about 1,600 employees back in Stamford, Connecticut, working on the Olympics, about 1,000 in Italy, about 700-plus here in the Bay Area working on the Super Bowl. About 250 or so down in L.A. for NBA All-Star weekend.

FOS: What do you have planned for Michael Jordan?

RC: With him joining our team as a special contributor, we had a great interview with him, and we hope there’s more in the future.

FOS: Has he given any indication whether there will be more?

RC: We’ve had discussions with him—plenty of ongoing discussions. We’ll see what happens. 

FOS: How is this Mike Tirico’s first Super Bowl?

RC: Yeah, I mean, it surprises everyone, right? It seems like he’s been at the forefront of NFL play-calling for a long, long time. He came to us back in 2016. He had his first Olympic hosting job in 2018. Al Michaels was still calling the Super Bowl back when we had it in L.A. during 2021. So yeah, this is his first one through. He’s a seasoned vet, and we can’t wait to have Mike on the mic for Sunday afternoon. 

FOS: The answer to this obviously is going to depend on the price, but would NBC and Peacock be interested in picking up any of these four games that are coming to the market?

RC: I think we always talk to the NFL about opportunities. You saw that with the Peacock wild-card game a few years ago, and that came to market. I’m sure we’ll have conversations with the NFL about those four games and whatever else that may be an opportunity. 

FOS: What was attractive to you about picking up this Sunday baseball package? 

RC: Certainly having 50 weeks a year of big-time sports at NBC. It’s a very easy-to-understand concept. Hopefully it’s a habit for people as they get ready for their workweek and they’re leaning back on their couch and five days ahead, they say, ‘What’s on today?’ And they know that NBC is gonna have three of the biggest professional American sports leagues with the best matchups, the best players, the best storylines, the fantastic production—and that’s just gonna be a constant. So hopefully that gets into daily habit. Look back at TV history, [remember] “Must-See TV” on Thursdays, right? HBO on Sundays. And so it’s a little bit of that: can we sort of own to a certain degree a day of the week? And when Sunday Night Baseball came available, it became a great opportunity for us.