Mike Tirico simultaneously hosted NBC’s Super Bowl 60 and 2026 Winter Olympics coverage.
This was Tirico’s first time calling a Super Bowl.
Immediately after the Super Bowl, Tirico flew from California to Milan to continue his Olympic hosting duties.
LIVIGNO, Italy – This is not Mike Tirico’s first rodeo – or first February trip crisscrossing the globe to announce the world’s most popular sporting events, the Super Bowl and the Olympics.
Tirico was simultaneously the centerpiece of NBC’s Super Bowl 60 production and the network’s 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics coverage. He hosted the opening ceremony from Beijing in 2022 ahead of Super Bowl 56 coverage, flew to Los Angeles for his ‘Football Night in America’ hosting duties on top of his Olympic responsibilities and stayed stateside (at NBC headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut) for the remainder of the Games.
But this year was the first time Tirico led play-by-play for the Super Bowl, a 29-13 Seattle Seahawks victory over the New England Patriots, before hopping a plane for Italy and the Olympics.
“It was as great as I could have imagined,” Tirico told USA TODAY Sports by phone from Milan. “At no point did I sit there and go ‘It’s over a billion people watching.’ There was none of that.”
NBC Sports executive producer Rob Hyland checked in with Tirico last week and reminded him to enjoy the experience. That remained in the back of his mind. The gorgeous California day that greeted Super Bowl attendees only reinforced it.
“I had a blast … it was as enjoyable a day as I’ve had in this business,” he said.
Tirico spent the halftime show featuring Bad Bunny on an Olympics production call – Bruce Springsteen was the only act he would have skipped it for, he joked. He was part of Sunday night’s Olympics coverage and contributed with confetti strewn at his feet from the field at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. There was the familiarity with hosting in that environment from Super Bowl 56, but he didn’t have to host the Lombardi Trophy presentation onstage this time.
“It was actually easier this time around,” he said.
Lindsey Vonn’s crash starts Tirico’s Super Sunday at 2:30 a.m.
Earlier that morning, at roughly 2:30 a.m. Pacific time, Tirico woke up to watch Lindsey Vonn, whose crash resulted in a complex tibia fracture.
“You just feel awful for her,” said Tirico, who’s gotten to know Vonn over the past three Winter Games cycles.
Although he missed Breezy Johnson’s gold-medal-winning women’s downhill run live, he stayed awake to watch her clinch the top spot. Then he went back to sleep for 90 minutes before starting his day.
After the Super Bowl, Tirico and about a dozen fellow NBC staffers boarded a private Bombardier Global 7500 for the 10.5-hour flight from the West Coast to Milan.
“So appreciative that we were able to get over on time, and very comfortabl(y),” Tirico said. “It’s, again, not something that you get to do ever in life and it was just the ideal way to get off the plane and be ready to do the prime-time show (Feb. 9), with enough time to do it as well.”
Tirico slept for about half of the flight and spent the other half watching the prime-time show. He also reviewed materials for the Feb. 9 show. Tirico said he’s watched highlights of the Super Bowl but hasn’t sat down to rewatch the broadcast and critique it, something that might not happen until after the Olympics. He’ll have plenty of time during his NBA travels once the Olympics end or during his eventual, actual offseason, he said.
Wheels down in Milan, Tirico stays prepped for East Coast time
The group landed just before 9 p.m. Milan time and Tirico was in another production meeting during the drive from the airport to his hotel. After about an hour there, he was at the International Broadcast Center and hosted “Primetime in Milan” from 11:30 p.m. local time. After the show, he was even able to unpack back at the hotel.
But there was a point Monday night that the travel and work had Tirico feeling tired for a few minutes. But hardly 16 hours after landing in Italy, he’s back in his Paris 2024 Summer Olympics routine – and the key is to keep his body on East Coast time.
After the Feb. 9 show, he slept for five hours, snuck in a 25-minute session on the treadmill and headed to work.
Tirico’s Olympic preparation has lasted years, he said. He hosted the World Figure Skating Championships in March 2025. He sat down with stars such as Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin prior to the NFL season and was able to concentrate on the Super Bowl throughout January – once NBC’s playoff games during the wild-card round and divisional round concluded.
“All these building blocks were in place, and you’re just adding on,” Tirico said. “So I’d say it was probably a little heavier toward the Super Bowl, but a lot of the Olympics planning was hay in the barn already.”
Tirico said he has full trust and confidence in NBC’s producers and editorial crew to address topics that expand beyond the realm of sport, such as president Donald Trump’s social-media criticism of men’s free skier Hunter Hess.
“That’s not what Americans are tuning in for in prime time,” Tirico said.
Tirico said he’d love to have the chance to pop up to Cortina were it a 40-minute train ride, but that’s not the case. He still expects these games to be “a helluva lot better than Beijing” in terms of having the chance to showcase Milan and the rest of northern Italy where the Olympics are taking place.
“There’s a feel in Milan of things that are going on,” said Tirico, who had only been in Italy for one night.
Not that he needed much sleep anyway.
