After going on a sports TV heater not seen in years, Mike Tirico is finally getting his due as the world’s best all-around sportscaster.

It’s hard to say somebody has “arrived” at age 59. But Tirico’s exemplary work for NBC Sports over the last month is creating daylight between him and his contemporaries.

Only two weeks ago, Tirico called his first Super Bowl with Sunday Night Football partner Cris Collinsworth. He then immediately hosted “Primetime in Milan” from the confetti-covered field at Levi’s Stadium before jetting to Italy to host NBC’s coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics.

That makes Tirico the first U.S. broadcaster to call the Super Bowl and host a Winter Games in the same year. Oh, and did we mention he’s also NBC’s lead play-by-play voice for the NBA as the network returns to hardwood coverage for the first time in 21 years?

It’s not often a host’s closing wrap-up goes viral. But that’s what happened Sunday night as Tirico put a bow on Team USA’s thrilling gold medal win over men’s hockey rival Canada. In a stirring essay, Tirico urged young people to pursue their own dreams, just like Team USA.

“Those dreams are formed now. Go chase them and go get them,” said Tirico. “Because our country loves sports—and it brings us together unlike anything else.”

The live monologue was flawless, heartfelt, and inspiring. No wonder Tirico drew instant praise from inside and outside the industry. 

Peacock’s Olympic Gold Zone host Scott Hanson wrote on X/Twitter: “@miketirico and@NBCSports were as good as it gets in that last hour. All-Time Great sports broadcasting there.” 

Fellow sportscaster Vic Lombardi tweeted: “I desperately need to know if Mike ad-libbed all that or if he’s using the prompter. Either way, it’s one of the all-time great closes to a sporting event I’ve ever seen. It resonated deeply with the audience. If he did that off the top of his head, crown him now. Wow.”

Even an executive from a rival network, Fox Sports president of insights and analytics Mike Mulvihill, had high praise. 

“Mike Tirico’s lovely monologue to close out the epic gold medal game shows how the way we think about the core appeal of sports has changed, and for the better IMO,” he posted on X. “More than ever it’s about bringing people together and inspiring kids. Bring on the World Cup.”

Tirico joined NBC in 2016 as the heir apparent to Bob Costas on Olympic coverage and Al Michaels on the NFL. As I wrote during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, he’s one of the last of the sports TV iron men.

Back in the day, legends like Costas, Michaels, Curt Gowdy, Jim McKay, Chris Schenkel, and Howard Cosell called multiple sports with equal aplomb. There were also story-telling essayists like Jack Whitaker, who put what we just watched into instant perspective with verve and style.

But those days are now mostly over. Jim Nantz, the face of CBS Sports, gave up his longtime lead role on the NCAA tournament to Ian Eagle to focus on the NFL and golf. Ditto for ESPN’s Joe Buck, who now sticks to Monday Night Football after calling football, MLB, and even golf at Fox. 

Tirico, on the other hand, keeps adding plum assignments to his growing résumé. He succeeded Michaels as the play-by-play voice of SNF in 2022. NBC hasn’t missed a beat, with SNF ranking as the No. 1 show in primetime in 2025 for a record 15th year in a row. Besides the NFL, Olympics, and NBA, Tirico also hosts NBC’s coverage of the Kentucky Derby and golf’s U.S. Open and British Open championships.

Success wasn’t always a sure thing for the Queens, N.Y., native. Especially not after ESPN gave him a lengthy suspension in the early 1990s following multiple allegations of sexual harassment. NBC stood by Tirico after the accusations resurfaced at the height of the #MeToo era and Matt Lauer’s departure from the network in 2017.

Nearly a decade later, Tirico is now firmly established as the face of the network’s sports coverage. In addition to recently calling his first Super Bowl, these last two weeks marked his fifth time hosting the Olympics. Costas, who hosted a record 12 Olympics, called attention to his successor’s versatility during a recent interview with FOS.

“Mike is excellent at what he does. He was the perfect choice to succeed Al [Michaels] on the football and succeed me as the host of the Olympics,” Costas said. “Anyone who’s any good has their own distinctive style. But I think there are similarities between me and Mike in that he’s able to host and also do play-by-play. He has some of the same interests and characteristics that I had while still being his own man.”

The relationship between Disney/ESPN and the Savannah Bananas is bearing more fruit. 

ESPN announced Tuesday that 25 Bananas games will air across its platforms this season—15 more than the package from last season—including a game against the Party Animals on ABC on June 28 from Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Ore. Six of the games will air on ESPN and nine on ESPN2. All 25 of the games will air on Disney+ and the ESPN Unlimited streaming service.

Bananas owner Jesse Cole told Front Office Sports last year that he was inspired by Walt Disney, and affirmed in an interview this week that the partnership with Disney/ESPN surpassed his expectations.

“Banana Ball Day at Disneyland was bigger than any of us ever could have imagined,” Cole says. “For me, it was a dream come true, as someone who’s religiously studied Walt Disney and his attention to the guest experience, to see thousands of fans lined up in front of the castle was a sight that I never imagined. They told us it was one of the biggest parades they’ve ever had at Disneyland.”

Last year, the 10 games on ESPN platforms averaged 502,000 viewers, a 127% increase from the team’s seven appearances across ESPN and ESPN2 from 2022 to 2024. Their July 5 game at Fenway Park drew 837,000 viewers.

Cole declined to comment on how much Disney is paying for this rights package. But he said his team’s investment into their own production heft has been substantial as they produce the games in-house and license them to networks.

“We’ve invested $13 million in our broadcast team,” Cole says. “We do it all ourselves. We’ve brought in top [production] talent from the NFL, NBA, NHL, e-sports, and we’ve got high-tech equipment, so we’re definitely going all in on the broadcast as this continues to grow globally.”

In addition to Disney/ESPN, the Bananas had rights deals with The CW and TNT Sports last year. Cole said they will also have additional broadcast partners this season, which will be announced in the coming weeks.

While Cole noted that the live events are still the Bananas’ “bread and butter” with shows airing on multiple partners, he said that they’ve had to get more “intentional” about how they script the games. That includes making sure that fans aren’t missing out on big entertainment acts between innings during commercial breaks.

Each game, regardless of whether it has a TV/streaming rights partner, also airs on the Bananas’ YouTube channel. “We have turned away some huge national partnerships, and left millions of dollars on the table, to continue to keep the games for free on YouTube for our fans,” Cole says.

The “Bananaball” league has been expanding, and there are now six teams: the Bananas, Party Animals, Firefighters, Texas Tailgaters, Loco Beach Coconuts, and Indianapolis Clowns. The demand has reached a point where games that don’t even feature the Bananas can sell out MLB stadiums, with the Party Animals playing at the ballparks of the Brewers, Tigers, and Guardians.

“Over 160,000 fans signed up to get tickets in Detroit, and when you look at each fan you’re expecting four tickets,” Cole said. “That’s over 700,000 fans who want to see the game. Even our newest teams have sold out everywhere they’re going. At every Bananaball show, you’re going to get 10-15 things that we’ve never done before in front of a live crowd.”

With several million fans on wait lists to get tickets to live events, a secondary market has popped up that has left prospective ticket buyers susceptible to scams.

“It’s never going to be erased. There will always be scams. We see it every day on Facebook. There are countless scams of people who don’t have tickets but say they do,” Cole says. He is therefore seeking to disrupt the resellers with his own marketplace.

“When we first announced the cities we’re going to next summer, within 24 hours there’s ‘tickets’ for sale on the biggest marketplace. Nobody has tickets! None have been sold, but they’re listed. Those are speculative tickets. It will always happen, but we’re tremendously excited about the fans-first marketplace, where every ticket is available for face value with no fees. It’s fans taking care of fans.”

Another reporter has joined the basketball executive ranks. 

The Portland Fire have hired Ben Pickman, who previously covered the league for The Athletic, to their front office. The Fire are one of two WNBA expansion teams that will begin play this year. 

Pickman will be a salary cap and strategy analyst for Fire GM Vanja Černivec, whom the team hired away from the Golden State Valkyries.

A spokesperson for the Fire declined to comment. The New York Times, the parent company of The Athletic, also declined to comment. Pickman announced in a tweet on Jan. 15 that he was leaving The Athletic but did not comment otherwise on the move.

Pickman spent the past three years at The Athletic as one of its lead WNBA and women’s college basketball writers. Before that, he spent four years at Sports Illustrated. 

He is the latest reporter to join a basketball team’s front office. In October, Monumental Basketball—which operates the Wizards, Mystics, and G League’s Capital City Go-Go—hired former ESPN executive editor Cristina Daglas to be the head of research and identity. 

Daglas’s gig is similar to that of former Sports Illustrated writer Lee Jenkins, who has had the same title for the Clippers since 2018. Michael Winger, now the president of Monumental Basketball, was the assistant GM of the Clippers when the organization hired Jenkins. 

Other journalists have worked in NBA front offices over the years. John Hollinger, Pickman’s former colleague at The Athletic, previously worked as the Grizzlies’ vice president of basketball operations and was hired away from ESPN. 

NBC reporter Grant Liffmann had the same title with the Hawks the past three seasons before returning to the sidelines this year. He previously covered the Warriors. And former Grantland writer Kirk Goldsberry worked as a Spurs vice president for strategic research for two years after the website was shut down. He now writes for The Ringer.