NBC Announces New Sunday Night Football Announce Team
NBC announced on Tuesday morning that Mike Tirico, Cris Collinsworth, and Melissa Stark will be the announcing team for Sunday Night Football this coming fall.
Tirico (pictured above) replaces Al Michaels, who is leaving to become the voice of Thursday Night Football with ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit on Amazon this fall.
Stark will replace Michele Tafoya, who has retired from broadcasting to enter the political arena in Minnesota, on the sidelines. Stark has previously been the sideline reporter for ABC's Monday Night Football in the early 2000's. And she's worked for the NFL Network in recent years.
The succession plan for NBC to replace Michaels has been in place ever since Tirico left ESPN to head to NBC in 2015. Tirico was the voice of Monday Night Football for ESPN/ABC from 2006 until 2014.
Collinsworth, a former NFL wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals in the 1980's, has been in broadcasting since his retirement in 1988. He's worked for NBC, FOX, and was an analyst on "Inside the NFL" for HBO and Showtime.
NBC's Sunday Night Football is regularly the highest rated program in prime time television on a weekly basis during the season. NBC has had the TV rights to NFL Sunday Night Football since 2006.