One of the industry’s best-known sideline reporters is calling it quits after this season.
NBC Sports sideline reporter Michele Tafoya is leaving her position on Sunday Night Football at the end of the season, the New York Post reported Tuesday. Tafoya had been the lead SNF sideline reporter since 2011, replacing Andrea Kremer. Previously, she was the lead sideline reporter on ESPN’s Monday Night Football from 2004-10, spanning the series’ final two seasons on ABC through its first several seasons on ESPN.
News of Tafoya’s departure comes as she has missed three straight weeks of SNF, an absence that has led to speculation NBC was punishing her for voicing conservative opinions during an appearance on ABC’s “The View” last month. Both NBC and Tafoya have said her absences were part of pre-planned “bye weeks” that were determined prior to the season.
In a recent podcast appearance, Tafoya said she timed her absences to coincide with NBC’s late season, cold weather trips, specifically mentioning Green Bay as a place she sought to avoid. In addition to missing this past Sunday’s game at Lambeau Field, she is also scheduled to miss NBC’s Vikings-Packers game there on January 2.
Tafoya, on “The City: Off Campus Podcast”: “So they said ‘Michele, you can have four games off, how about that?’ And I said, ‘yes!’ So the instant the schedule came out, and I saw two games in Green Bay in December, I said, ‘I’m taking those two off.’ And I swear to you, I worked on Thanksgiving because it was in a dome in New Orleans, rather than the following game in Baltimore.”
This is not the first time Tafoya has dropped a marquee assignment. She was ESPN/ABC’s lead NBA sideline reporter from 2002-08, dropping that assignment to spend more time with her family.
It was not immediately clear if she plans to step away from the industry or take on a new role. She has also served as NBC’s Olympic swimming sideline reporter.
[News from NYP 12.14]
