When NBC televises next year's Winter Olympics from Pyeongchang, South Korea, a familiar face will be gone from the prime-time anchor seat: Bob Costas, who held the job for 24 years, will be replaced by Mike Tirico, who joined the network in May.
"It just felt to me like the right time and it's felt like the right time for a while," Costas said in an interview this week, in advance of NBC's announcement Thursday on Today.
"This was a good time to step away, while I could still do it," he said.
Tirico worked at ESPN for 25 years, and his versatility as a host and play-by-play announcer made him a leading contender to succeed Costas as soon as NBC hired him. He was a daytime host during the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro last year. He also has called NFL and Notre Dame games and has hosted the U.S. Open golf championship.
"I knew Bob wasn't going to stay in the job for 20 more years," Tirico said, "but I didn't know if they were going to choose me or when it would happen."
Costas' long run as the prime-time host calls to mind that of Jim McKay, who covered or hosted 10 Olympics for ABC Sports. That Costas held the job for so long reflected NBC's commitment to making the Olympics the centerpiece of its sports portfolio and to holding onto highly rated programming that appealed to a broad demographic, especially women. The network has spent billions of dollars to carry every Summer Games since 1988 and every Winter Games since 2002.
NBCUniversal, the network's parent company, has the rights to carry every Olympics until 2032.
Costas was NBC's late-night host during the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea, when Bryant Gumbel was the prime-time host. Costas took over the prime-time assignment in 1992, when the Summer Olympics were in Barcelona, Spain. The only gaps in his prime-time hosting resume came when CBS televised the 1992, 1994 and 1998 Winter Games.
"The 11 prime-time Olympics may never be touched," said Tirico, 50, who declined to discuss the streak he might have if he keeps the prime-time position through 2032.
"Hopefully they invite me back for another," he said. "I'm just focused on South Korea."
Costas, 64, decided before the Rio Games that it would be his final Olympics as the prime-time host.
"Rio had some capstone moments," he said. "Michael Phelps was finishing off. So was Usain Bolt. And Simone Biles was emerging. It had moments that felt like closure to me, and this felt like a good time to step aside."
His contract allowed him to determine whether he continued in the job, and he said he would have stayed if NBC had not had someone like Tirico in place.
Costas is not only leaving as NBC's prime-time host, but he is also reducing his overall workload at the network. He will no longer host Football Night in America, the pregame show that airs before the network's Sunday Night Football broadcasts. He will host next year's Super Bowl coverage while Tirico is in Korea.
Costas will take on a role at the network similar to Tom Brokaw's, offering commentary and features at major events, like the Olympics or the Super Bowl, or appearing on NBC programming when news breaks, as he did when Muhammad Ali died last year. The network regularly calls on Brokaw, the former NBC Nightly News anchor, to comment on major events like presidential elections.
Scaling back his NBC schedule will give Costas more time to indulge his love of baseball at MLB Network, where he calls games, narrates documentaries and hosts round-table shows.
Costas said he is prepared for his change, and is fond of recalling everything he wanted to do was at NBC: He called baseball games, hosted the talk show Later, contributed to NBC news magazine shows, hosted NBA and NFL programs and called basketball games.
"And," he said, "I was younger then."
Sports on 02/10/2017