Mike Tirico
speaker
1,317 appearances
6 recordings
5 series
first heard Jul 2024
last heard 16 Jul
Mike Tirico’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.
Appearances
I always wanted to call games, what I'm doing now, right? And my bosses told me, you know, you're a studio guy. We need you in the studio. So I volunteered to do games on my day off on Saturday. Wow. And work a six-day during the basketball season to get a chance in 94 to start doing games. And that's what I always wanted to do. And I'm like, I'm going to prove to you guys. that I'm good enough.
And it took a couple of years. And then in the end of 96, one of our bosses went to ABC and then he said, hey, you told me that you wanted to start doing some other stuff. Would you like to do some golf? Did two events in 96. And then 97, I got to do golf at ABC. And the best thing about starting golf in 1997, that was Tiger's first full year of playing golf.
So I got right in when the Tiger era started and golf just freaking took off.
I had a bunch of them. I think I've done like 65 or 66 majors, and Tiger's played in most of them. Wow. Wow. And it's just so – it covered a call, I should say. And, Mike, the energy around Tiger is different from any other athlete, even Jordan. Now, Jordan was – Michael was in a team sport, right? Yeah. And there was still this incredible energy and juice around Michael when he was there.
But when Tiger was 100 yards away, you could just feel it. You could just see the pack of people following him. Watching people try to go hole by hole, shot by shot, to see Tiger was hysterical. People tripping over each other and trying to run ahead. It was a phenomenon that lasted for a full couple of decades. It was one of the most fascinating things we've ever seen.
Those were a couple of black golfers that were on the stage.
Exactly. It was like Michael Jordan. And the thing about his dominance that was so cool to me was when he got the lead, he always closed. He always, all but twice, he always closed the deal going into the final round. And guys spit up the lead every other week, usually, on tour. If not more than that, every week. So he had the impact that Jack Nicklaus had.
Because if his name was on the leaderboard, people would watch. I was just at an event with Tom Watson a couple of weeks ago. And he said, you know, when you saw Nicklaus' name on the board, you're like, uh-oh. And when you're thinking about somebody else, you're defeated. You're half defeated.
So a lot of people talk about Kaitlyn Clark and what she's done with women's basketball and the ratings are the likes of which we've never seen before. She's had an impact on that sport like Michael did in the NBA and Tiger did just in terms of this. They blew the roof and the ceiling off of where the ratings were. And that'll be the mark that's going to be so hard to get for years to come.
Because it was just the first time people have seen it. They wanted to be there and watch it. And there was something captivating about them. And they took it to a height that I don't think you'll see in other sports again.
Legacy doesn't happen when you try to make it happen. Legacy happens when what you do naturally just brings people from all corners because there's something unique and captivating about you. And that's what happened with Jordan. That's what happened with Tiger. You mentioned just Tiger being black and
in a sport that had been so dominated by white players and country clubs and membership and all that stuff, which I think Tiger's presence helped change over time.
I thought Tiger was going to change the sport that way. And you'd see a lot more minorities playing and becoming the best players. What he did instead, his athletic legacy in the sport beyond his records, he made golf cool. And now guys who are 6'1", 6'2", 6'3", started playing golf. And you look at the major, guys like Brooks Koepka, Tony Finau, etc.
You get like some big guys who are now playing golf.
who would not have played the sport back before Tiger. It wasn't cool to be one of these big athletes who could be a tight end or a shooting forward in basketball. And that, I think, is Tiger's long-term impact on the sport itself.
I'm going to knock on it, man. I have gotten through 36 years of doing this without really having a major all-time YouTube screw-up.
And I'm going to blame Sean. There was one time I was doing a TV show, a sportscast in Syria, because I have a nut allergy, and I was about to get sick, and I got away from the camera before that happened. So nothing's happened in front of a camera. You just blew it out? You blew it out. If you want the details, Sean, thank you. Uh-huh.
No, but I might go to Paris. We begged. Oh, man, you should. We begged our bosses. Can we just host the whole Olympics from Tahiti? There's something going on there, right? Who cares what the background is?
It's going to be, look, Paris is one of two things. Either you've been there and you can't wait to go back, or you've never been there and you want to go. And the Olympics needs this in the biggest way. If you think back, the last three Olympics have been in Asia. We had the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Then COVID-19. Denied Tokyo 2020. So that was held in 2021. COVID, no fans.
And then Beijing held the Winter Games in the winter of 2022, February. Again, no fans. So we've had two Olympic Games with no fans. What do you mean no fans? COVID. Oh, because people didn't... I see.
Showing 1261–1280 of 1,317 · page 64 of 66
← Previous
Next →