If an evil wind kicks up at Super Bowl LX, coordinating producer Rob Hyland of NBC Sports will be ready to rock and roll.

Like other network producers before him on Super Sunday, Hyland has several new TV “enhancements” ready for the Big Game. One of them is a piece of technology called Weather Applied Metrics, which measures the wind inside Levi’s Stadium.

During Sunday’s AFC championship game, the swirling winds and wintry conditions in Denver played a role in both teams missing four out of five combined field-goal attempts. If the wind starts blowing Feb. 8, Hyland will have this “WAM” device as another tool in the production truck. 

“They’ve actually been working with the 49ers for years, measuring airflow within the stadium. Especially since they put in a new video board in preparation for the Super Bowl and this year’s World Cup. Weather Applied Metrics can interpret data and speed of wind. It’s so different at ground level than it is at 20 feet, 30 feet, 40 feet,” Hyland told Front Office Sports. “If we have a windy day, we’ll be able to graphically illustrate how those wind patterns are coming into the stadium—and can potentially affect the ball flight. That’s one of a number of situational pieces of technology that we have at our disposal.”

For those who dismiss the wind as a factor, consider the 1963 NFL Championship Game between the Giants and Bears. With 36 TD passes that season, Giants QB Y.A.Tittle had turned New York into a passing team. But the driving wind and cold at Yankee Stadium, and a tough Bears defense, humbled Tittle, who threw five interceptions. The Bears won 14–10.

Tom Brady, Fox’s No. 1 game analyst, recently staged an on-air clinic on how QBs can try to bore passes through the wind. Gauging how wind will impact kicks and passes at field level is another example of how networks like NBC raise their game on Super Bowl Sunday. In 2024, CBS Sports embedded “doink cams” inside the goalposts at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. That way more than 100 million TV viewers could get an up-close view if a kicker doinked one of the goalposts. 

Hyland just wrapped his fourth season as coordinating producer of NBC’s Sunday Night Football, the most-watched TV show in prime time for a record 15 years in a row. But the 29-year NBC veteran knows the pressure will be on in Santa Clara. 

This will be Hyland’s first time serving as coordinating producer of a Super Bowl. He’ll join NBC legend Tommy Roy as the only NBC executive to serve as coordinating producer of a Super Bowl and primetime producer of an Olympic Games.

Here’s a look inside Hyland and NBC’s coverage game plan for Super Bowl LX:

• Five-hour pregame show: NBC and Peacock will air a five-hour pregame show from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET. Maria Taylor will serve as a lead host of the pregame show and the on-field presentation of the Vince Lombardi Trophy to the Patriots or Seahawks. It will be the first time for Taylor in both roles. She’ll be joined on the desk by cohosts Jac Collinsworth and Noah Eagle, plus analysts Tony Dungy, Jason Garrett, Rodney Harrison, and Devin McCourty. More than 700 NBC employees will be scattered across seven locations around the Bay Area to cover the game. NBC will employ more than 80 cameras compared to 30 for SNF. Parent company NBCUniversal is planning more than 90 hours of Super Bowl–driven content across multiple platforms.

• Friends and family: Hyland has worked a dozen Olympics for NBC. Borrowing from NBC’s Olympic approach, he’ll outfit several family members of Patriots and Seahawks players with microphones, and then weave their reaction into coverage. “Part of the fabric of our storytelling is connecting the athletes competing to their loved ones and family members. We have extensive plans to showcase friends and family,” he says. “We are hopeful that we will have connections from each team wearing microphones during the game to really feel what they’re feeling watching their son on the field on Super Bowl Sunday. We’ll have a dedicated team monitoring those camera and audio sources, and a producer assigned to turn around the best stuff. Hopefully that begins when those family members get to the stadium.”

• Mike Tirico’s big day: NBC’s 21st overall Super Bowl telecast will kick off at 6:30 p.m. ET on NBC, Peacock, Telemundo and Universo. Play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico will call his first Super Bowl alongside Cris Collinsworth in the broadcast booth. Out of Collinsworth’s six Super Bowl telecasts, five have involved the Patriots, including their previous 2015 classic vs. the Seahawks. Veteran Melissa Stark and Super Bowl rookie Kaylee Hartung will serve as sideline reporters. Terry McAulay will serve as rules analyst. Following the presentation of the Lombardi Trophy, Tirico will immediately jump into hosting Primetime in Milan from the stadium.

Hyland, a former college football player, told FOS he’s dreamed about producing a Super Bowl since graduating from Williams College and entering the TV business. Why not? Sports TV is literally in his genes.

His father, Robert Hyland III, ran TV and radio stations in New York and Los Angeles. At KCBS in Los Angeles, he hired future sports TV legend Jim Lampley. 

His grandfather, Robert Hyland II, was the legendary GM of KMOX Radio in St. Louis, where he hired a young Joe Buck and Bob Costas. 

His great-grandfather, Robert Hyland I, was a doctor for the St. Louis Cardinals’ famed “Gashouse Gang” in 1930. His patients included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Ty Cobb. “Doc Hyland” was so renowned for his work with ballplayers, he was dubbed the “Surgeon General of Baseball” by MLB commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

Hyland initially thought he would become a doctor. But he fell in love with sports TV right out of college. During the Milan Cortina Olympic Games, Hyland will be watching his 6-month-old son, Robert Hyland V, who goes by “Bo.” Could another Rob Hyland someday produce the biggest TV show in the country? 

“That would be pretty cool,” says Hyland. “Super Bowl 100 will have Bo Hyland’s name in the credits.”

With the return of Bob Costas as host of Sunday Night Baseball, NBC is leaning fully in to one of the most interesting sports media strategies in years. Call it NEW-stalgia. 

Once NBC won back the NBA and MLB, it embraced the warm, fuzzy feeling many fans had for their previous coverage of both leagues. Think of the strategy as a nostalgic paean to NBC’s coverage from the ’90s—while moving both sports forward via new personalities, innovations, and technology.

NBC’s coverage of the NBA from 1990 to 2002 is recalled by many as a golden era, with Michael Jordan’s dynastic Bulls winning all six of their titles on the network’s air.

NBC’s media history with baseball is even more intriguing. The network has broadcast more World Series than any other network: 39. NBC aired the first televised World Series in 1949; the first All-Star Game in 1952; and was the home of familiar programming like the Game of the Week and Monday Night Baseball from 1957 to 2000.

But what about millennials who weren’t around for sports coverage in the ’90s? NBC still wants them. The average sports TV viewer is in their mid-50s. So NBC’s not making the mistake of ignoring current fans in a quixotic pursuit of youth. Instead, it’s like a classic rock band playing the oldies for these graying viewers. That’s why fans are seeing familiar faces, theme songs, and graphics. Here are some more details on NBC’s back-to-the-future approach:

• NBC has earned critical praise for its first NBA game coverage in more than 20 years. The network brought back John Tesh’s classic “Roundball Rock” theme to open its game telecast and paid through the nose for MJ himself to serve as a “special contributor” via taped interviews with Mike Tirico. Even if His Airness’s interviews haven’t added much, NBC’s early NBA numbers speak for themselves. The network opened the 2025–26 season with the most-watched NBA Tipoff doubleheader in 15 years. Its two Martin Luther King Day Jr. afternoon tilts—Knicks vs. Mavericks and Thunder vs. Cavaliers—were the most watched since 1992. Season to date, NBC’s Tuesday night game coverage is drawing an average of 2.7 million viewers, up 82% from last year, when the games aired on TNT, and on pace for the best season since 2013–14.

• There’s no non-player more synonymous with the Grand Old Game than Costas, according to NBC executive producer Sam Flood. The 29-time Emmy winner will launch his comeback on MLB’s Opening Day on March 26, hosting the pregame before NBC’s telecast of the World Series champion Dodgers taking on the Diamondbacks in an exclusive, primetime window. Costas’s return to NBC, where he spent 40 years, will put a fitting coda on his career. “As I’ve always said, I don’t need a brass band and a parade, but if we can do some good work, have some fun, and it feels like the right, concluding chapter, I think everybody will be gratified by that,” he said on a press call.

• Similar to its return to the NBA, older MLB viewers should feel an instant familiarity with NBC’s baseball coverage. “There will certainly be an acknowledgment of nostalgia and what we represent as a company in baseball. We’ll be part of the narrative,” Flood said on the press call. “But we’re also going to move the sport forward like we have with the NBA. We’re going to try some new things that we’ve done in the NBA. … We’ve got some neat ideas that will take people deeper into the game, we hope, and build out the sport that we love because we have a bunch of baseball hardcore fans in our building that couldn’t have celebrated any louder when this deal came to fruition.”

Tying it together is Costas—the face of NBC’s baseball and basketball coverage in the ’90s. Earlier this NBA season, he reprised his former on-air hoops role, delivering multiple opening teases for the NBA on NBC. He’ll continue to contribute to the network’s coverage as the season continues.

This year, NBC’s Sunday Night Football reigned as the No. 1 show on primetime TV for a record 15th straight year. By regaining first the NBA, then MLB, NBC is basically taking over the most-watched night of the week, noted Costas. 

“The media landscape has changed, it’s true. But the next two deals here allow Sunday night to become sports night year-round on NBC—Sunday Night Football, Sunday Night NBA, Sunday Night Baseball,” Costas said.

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy is indeed permitted to attend the Super Bowl in Santa Clara after previously being barred from the Big Game, the NFL confirmed to Front Office Sports.

“Mr. Portnoy can buy a ticket to the game,” an NFL spokesperson said in an email.  

Responding to the apparent un-banning, Portnoy told FOS, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” in reference to Ronald Reagan’s 1987 speech in West Berlin. 

Portnoy’s permittance to attend the Super Bowl was first reported by TMZ. 

In 2019, Portnoy, a vociferous New England fan, was kicked out of Super Bowl LIII, between the Patriots and Rams in Atlanta. He infamously mimicked a “dead fish” during the ejection. The forced removal came after Portnoy falsified a media credential for a Super Bowl event earlier in the week and was charged with criminal trespass; longtime Barstool podcaster PFT Commenter also falsified a media badge in Houston in 2017, when the outlet had been denied Super Bowl credentials. 

The feud between Portnoy and Barstool and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell dates back to when Tom Brady was suspended over Deflategate. In 2015, Portnoy and Barstool employees John Feitelberg, Hank Lockwood, and Paul Gulczynski protested the suspension outside league headquarters in New York—and were arrested. Portnoy later distributed thousands of T-shirts and towels portraying Goodell as a clown with a big red nose. 

Nevertheless, there were some signs that the beef was thawing. After Barstool made a wide-ranging deal with Fox Sports, there were frequent ad reads during NFL games on Fox for FS1’s programming slate, including Portnoy. Barstool personalities Dan “Big Cat” Katz and Michael Katic also did a sketch that aired on Fox’s top-rated NFL pregame show. 

Barstool also has a partnership with Netflix, which for the past two seasons has aired NFL games on Christmas. Barstool’s video podcast licensing deal with Netflix is worth more than $10 million per year, FOS first reported. 

Portnoy has a close relationship with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and he sat in the owner’s suite at a road game in Tampa earlier this season.