NYC Rebel
...on the otherside of the pond
I hope there's a mugshot and a physical description in his future
Mike Tirico Would Like to Talk About Anything but Mike Tirico
BALTIMORE — Don’t pay any attention to Mike Tirico, even if you’ll be seeing much more of him, and soon.
Tirico has been a fixture in sports broadcasting for nearly three decades, his voice a prominent and familiar soundtrack for football and basketball and soccer and tennis and — actually, you name the sport, and he has probably worked it.
This week, he’ll host his 21st British Open. In the fall, he will take over Al Michaels’s spot on “Thursday Night Football.” Next February, he will replace Bob Costas as the host of NBC’s Olympics coverage, a not-so-subtle hint that he also is the network’s choice as the new face of NBC Sports.
Yet don’t mind Tirico. He insists. When he was in Baltimore in May to call the Preakness Stakes for NBC, he explained why he wants it that way.
In contrast to the yelling, preening and debating in vogue on sports shows, Tirico said, he strives to be an invisible narrator. It is an old-school notion, but Tirico’s shtick is that he doesn’t have a shtick — and that might just be why he appeals to such a broad audience.
“I don’t want to be the story,” Tirico, 50, told me over dinner in downtown Baltimore. “I’m not into the whole opinion thing. Where I’m rooted is in the games. I just love watching the games.”
Like it or not, the light will shine even brighter on him as the host of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February, when legions of viewers will tune in not just for the sports, but also for the spectacle. Tirico will have the highest-profile sports broadcasting job around.
Which might prompt some viewers to wonder: Who is this Mike Tirico? That’s a tough question to answer.
Tirico will tell you he is an Italian guy from Queens,
raised by a single mother, Maria. He played Little League baseball and loved watching and reading about sports. He loved talking about sports even more. He got his first insider’s view through a grandfather who worked at Shea Stadium, and who would sometimes let Tirico tag along.
But if you ask him deeper questions about his background, or about his being one of the most prominent broadcasters of African-American lineage on television, he doesn’t want to engage.
He has been dealing with questions about his race for years, most of the time wearily.
Those questions stem from a 1991 profile of him in The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y., when he was just starting his career. In that article, Tirico said he wasn’t sure if he was black.
Ever since, perhaps regretting offering even that small peek into his private life, he has preferred to avoid the subject. Though he once described his relatives as “as white as the refrigerator I’m standing in front of right now,” a Washington Post article in 1997 described Tirico as “the first black play-by-play man (with a little Italian heritage in the family tree) to handle a golf telecast.”
But these days, at a time when the nation is transfixed by a discussion of race relations, Tirico just doesn’t want to go there. He told me to say he was mixed race, and that was that.
“Why do I have to check any box?” he said. “If we live in a world where we’re not supposed to judge, why should anyone care about identifying?”
Besides, he added, “The race question in America is one that probably never produces a satisfactory answer for those who are asking the questions.”
Still, people ask.
Kenneth L. Shropshire, the author of the 1998 book, “In Black and White: Race and Sports in America” who now runs the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University, said he had overheard men in his barbershop joking that Tirico was “the whitest black man on TV.”
But Tirico’s ambivalence over his background may be in line with a younger generation more flexible with labels or rejecting traditional ones outright, said Shropshire, who is also a former professor at the Wharton School.
“It’s saying,” he added, “don’t peg me as anything.”
That seems to be the ideal solution for Tirico, who prefers to float unnoticed through a sports world where teams and fans are often a mix of everything and everyone. That blended space, and the freedom and anonymity granted to those inside it, is one of the reasons Tirico became a sports fan.
“Sports handles this so well,” he said of differences in races, religions and backgrounds. “It’s not black or white, and it doesn’t have to be.”
Tirico has long been a student of sports, and his ability to combine an astounding amount of knowledge with a seamless, natural delivery is what has helped make him one of the best. That should make for a seamless transition from Costas’s style, but that is no accident, either.
Costas and Tirico are Syracuse University graduates and they have known each other for decades, first meeting in the 1980s, when Tirico received the first Bob Costas scholarship, awarded to Syracuse’s best broadcast student.
In the years since then, Costas said, he watched Tirico improve and branch out into more sports, and broaden his skills beyond the prototypical play-by-play man or reliable studio host into a veteran capable of handling both roles. The Olympics job, Costas said with obvious pride, couldn’t be a better fit for him.
Just don’t expect Tirico to make it about himself.
As we wrapped up dinner, Tirico, now at what most would consider the summit of his profession, tried to leave me with the idea that he’s just an unremarkable cog in this whole big sports machine.
“I’m not famous,” he said.
Then he walked out of the restaurant and hopped into a black SUV. When I climbed into my taxi a minute later, the driver was giddy.
“Hey, oh, my God, was that Mike Tirico?” he asked me. “I can’t believe it. I love Mike Tirico!”
Mike Tirico Would Like to Talk About Anything but Mike Tirico
BALTIMORE — Don’t pay any attention to Mike Tirico, even if you’ll be seeing much more of him, and soon.
Tirico has been a fixture in sports broadcasting for nearly three decades, his voice a prominent and familiar soundtrack for football and basketball and soccer and tennis and — actually, you name the sport, and he has probably worked it.
This week, he’ll host his 21st British Open. In the fall, he will take over Al Michaels’s spot on “Thursday Night Football.” Next February, he will replace Bob Costas as the host of NBC’s Olympics coverage, a not-so-subtle hint that he also is the network’s choice as the new face of NBC Sports.
Yet don’t mind Tirico. He insists. When he was in Baltimore in May to call the Preakness Stakes for NBC, he explained why he wants it that way.
In contrast to the yelling, preening and debating in vogue on sports shows, Tirico said, he strives to be an invisible narrator. It is an old-school notion, but Tirico’s shtick is that he doesn’t have a shtick — and that might just be why he appeals to such a broad audience.
“I don’t want to be the story,” Tirico, 50, told me over dinner in downtown Baltimore. “I’m not into the whole opinion thing. Where I’m rooted is in the games. I just love watching the games.”
Like it or not, the light will shine even brighter on him as the host of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February, when legions of viewers will tune in not just for the sports, but also for the spectacle. Tirico will have the highest-profile sports broadcasting job around.
Which might prompt some viewers to wonder: Who is this Mike Tirico? That’s a tough question to answer.
Tirico will tell you he is an Italian guy from Queens,
raised by a single mother, Maria. He played Little League baseball and loved watching and reading about sports. He loved talking about sports even more. He got his first insider’s view through a grandfather who worked at Shea Stadium, and who would sometimes let Tirico tag along.But if you ask him deeper questions about his background, or about his being one of the most prominent broadcasters of African-American lineage on television, he doesn’t want to engage.
He has been dealing with questions about his race for years, most of the time wearily.Those questions stem from a 1991 profile of him in The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y., when he was just starting his career. In that article, Tirico said he wasn’t sure if he was black.
Ever since, perhaps regretting offering even that small peek into his private life, he has preferred to avoid the subject. Though he once described his relatives as “as white as the refrigerator I’m standing in front of right now,” a Washington Post article in 1997 described Tirico as “the first black play-by-play man (with a little Italian heritage in the family tree) to handle a golf telecast.”
But these days, at a time when the nation is transfixed by a discussion of race relations, Tirico just doesn’t want to go there. He told me to say he was mixed race, and that was that.
“Why do I have to check any box?” he said. “If we live in a world where we’re not supposed to judge, why should anyone care about identifying?”
Besides, he added, “The race question in America is one that probably never produces a satisfactory answer for those who are asking the questions.”
Still, people ask.
Kenneth L. Shropshire, the author of the 1998 book, “In Black and White: Race and Sports in America” who now runs the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University, said he had overheard men in his barbershop joking that Tirico was “the whitest black man on TV.”
But Tirico’s ambivalence over his background may be in line with a younger generation more flexible with labels or rejecting traditional ones outright, said Shropshire, who is also a former professor at the Wharton School.“It’s saying,” he added, “don’t peg me as anything.”
That seems to be the ideal solution for Tirico, who prefers to float unnoticed through a sports world where teams and fans are often a mix of everything and everyone. That blended space, and the freedom and anonymity granted to those inside it, is one of the reasons Tirico became a sports fan.
“Sports handles this so well,” he said of differences in races, religions and backgrounds. “It’s not black or white, and it doesn’t have to be.”
Tirico has long been a student of sports, and his ability to combine an astounding amount of knowledge with a seamless, natural delivery is what has helped make him one of the best. That should make for a seamless transition from Costas’s style, but that is no accident, either.
Costas and Tirico are Syracuse University graduates and they have known each other for decades, first meeting in the 1980s, when Tirico received the first Bob Costas scholarship, awarded to Syracuse’s best broadcast student.
In the years since then, Costas said, he watched Tirico improve and branch out into more sports, and broaden his skills beyond the prototypical play-by-play man or reliable studio host into a veteran capable of handling both roles. The Olympics job, Costas said with obvious pride, couldn’t be a better fit for him.
Just don’t expect Tirico to make it about himself.
As we wrapped up dinner, Tirico, now at what most would consider the summit of his profession, tried to leave me with the idea that he’s just an unremarkable cog in this whole big sports machine.
“I’m not famous,” he said.
Then he walked out of the restaurant and hopped into a black SUV. When I climbed into my taxi a minute later, the driver was giddy.
“Hey, oh, my God, was that Mike Tirico?” he asked me. “I can’t believe it. I love Mike Tirico!”
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us Queens posters don't claim this c00n.
