Sports Media Watch presents thoughts on recent events in the industry, this week looking back at Sunday’s Super Bowl 60 broadcast on NBC.
Super Bowl 60 by and large lived down to the low expectations, as neither team scored a touchdown in the first half and New England failed to score a point until the fourth quarter. While the action picked up a bit toward the end, it was not a game that will be remembered for years to come. But that is to be expected every now and again.
As should not be remotely surprising, NBC’s Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth proved up to the task of making a humdrum game seem compelling. Collinsworth did not hold back on some of the decision-making by the Patriots’ Drake Maye down the stretch, even seeming at times incredulous, but he balanced it with praise on the rare occasions when it was warranted. Tirico was, as he almost always is, preternaturally smooth. It was his first Super Bowl broadcast as a play-by-play voice, but his greatest skill may be appearing as if he has always been in whatever role he takes.
On the sidelines, Kaylee Hartung displayed the kind of skills that merit a higher-profile role than “Thursday Night Football.” (Prime Video has a high-quality production and is starting to generate linear-level audiences. But Thursday night is not football night; Sunday night is football night.) Her postgame questions incorporated little bits of storytelling that set them apart from the usual generalities and broad narratives. Maybe that is owed to her experience in news, but her questions just seemed more specific, substantive and able to draw out unique answers.
A credible argument can be made that Hartung, who already works for NBC via its news division, is already the best NFL sideline reporter outside of Lisa Salters, with no slight to others like Tracy Wolfson. There should be some way to incorporate her into what is the higher-profile primetime role. (That does not necessarily mean taking away Melissa Stark’s job; if ESPN can put both Salters and Laura Rutledge on the sidelines, surely “Sunday Night Football” can justify ‘double-coverage’ as well.)
The production did the best it could with what the game offered. One small element that was welcomed was the swelling, almost cinematic cut of the “Sunday Night Football” theme used upon Seattle’s win, which seemed at least to this viewer to be entirely new.
The Olympics lead-out did not seem particularly compelling, opening with the women’s downhill competition that made considerable headlines many hours earlier. Surely the whole country knew how Lindsey Vonn’s run turned out. As has been noted, NBC’s Olympic lead out four years ago opened with live competition. And in 2026, having Tirico set up the competition without acknowledging what all viewers surely knew took place felt just a bit out of date.
And Sunday’s events were a reminder that no matter how much branding one puts behind the big events, they still have to deliver. Tirico referred on-air to Sunday’s pairing of the Olympics and Super Bowl as the “ultimate peak day” of NBC’s ‘Legendary February,’ but between Vonn’s crash and the Seahawks’ dominance, it was far from a legendary night. And one imagines that Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game, which NBC has very charitably included on the marquee, is not going to qualify as legendary either.
On the subject of NBC’s self-promotion, it was (as one should expect for the Super Bowl broadcaster) in overdrive. There was the promo for its 100th anniversary, which had its moments but really could have done without the overwrought music (this is just television, after all). As far as sports is concerned, there were strong ads for its new Major League Baseball package and year-round Sunday night sports line-up — with the tagline “Sunday Night is Game Night.” NBC is not the “A” partner for MLB or the NBA, but being associated with the Super Bowl network is already paying major dividends for both leagues.
But when it comes to self-promotion, no network can beat ESPN. The Worldwide Leader, which is now the next network up in the Super Bowl rotation, made the unusual decision to have some of its most prominent studio shows originate from next year’s Super Bowl site in Los Angeles in an initiative called “The Handoff.” Yes, the Chris Berman-led “NFL Primetime” crew was on-site from this year’s game. (Sidenote — why does only the Berman version get the old-school theme music? Does ESPN think that young people prefer the lifeless droning theme song it typically uses on its NFL studio coverage?) But “SportsCenter” with Scott Van Pelt and the debut of “Super Bowl Live” took place from outside a placid Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles, where in little more than a year Disney will produce its first Super Bowl as the primary broadcaster since 2006.
One could easily take issue with ESPN airing Super Bowl postgame coverage from a completely different city in an exercise of characteristic self-indulgence. But the shows were fine. Perhaps if they were on-site, players could have stopped by the desk for in-person interviews, but the remote interviews sufficed. The quality of the content did not suffer. And by the time you get to the third postgame show, the actual stadium would be deserted anyway.
Beyond the sports media domain, one small note. The 1990s began nearly 40 years ago, and at some point it is going to be time to grapple with the fact that the stars of that era are in different stages of life. That day was certainly not Sunday, with no small amount of AI-generated de-aging in the Super Bowl commercials. There is a bit of — to borrow from a sitcom of the following decade — arrested development taking place here. If you want to make it 1997 again, ask yourself whether the stars of 30 and 40-year-old sitcoms were in Super Bowl commercials that year. (Maybe the Brady kids.)
