When Jac Collinsworth, just 27 years old, debuted the prestigious job as NBC’s play-by-play voice for Notre Dame football in September 2022, she succeeded one of sports’ most decorated broadcasters, Mike Tirico.
Receiving such a position suggested he was a sports broadcasting prodigy, but from his first game, when Marshall defeated Notre Dame, Collinsworth didn’t seem like he deserved the national stage in this role. Lacked precision and rhythm, and he kept saying, “Mmm, hmm,” a bad habit that is usually eradicated with years of practice.
The focus on Collinsworth only grew last year, especially during a flat performance with teammate Jason Garrett in a primetime game between Notre Dame and USC in October.
Behind all the criticism is the fact that Collinsworth’s father, Cris, is NBC’s top NFL analyst and appears on “Sunday Night Football” and five Super Bowl broadcasts. Jac also appears on SNF’s pregame show as an on-site reporter/host, among other roles on the network.
Any son or daughter who enters the family business carries the label of nepotism. Jac Collinsworth’s case was no different, but attention grew as it flooded in.
Although Collinsworth, after graduating from Notre Dame in 2017, found success at ESPN as a reporter and then on the sidelines and as an anchor for NBC Sports, his failure at Fighting Irish games prompted the man responsible for the move in the first place, Sam Flood. , president of production for NBC Sports, to finally remove Collinsworth from the position last month, admitting his mistake since Collinsworth did not yet have the necessary play-by-play representatives for such a large task.
Jac Collinsworth, Cris Collinsworth and Flood declined interview requests.
Jac Collinsworth working the Chargers-Bills game before Christmas with Tony Dungy, center, and Rodney Harrison. (Kirby Lee/USA Today)
Sports broadcasts are full of father-son succession stories. There are more successes than failures and, to be clear, Jac Collinsworth should not be included in either category at the moment; especially at 29 years old. He just he’s not alone.
This offseason in Oakland, the A’s hired 24-year-old Chris Caray, a fourth-generation broadcaster dating back to his great-grandfather Harry. In Toronto, Ben Shulman, 23, Dan’s son, joins the Blue Jays radio booth, just a door away from his father, who calls television for the team in addition to work. of him on ESPN.
There is a long list of sons and daughters who followed their fathers into sports broadcasting, from Mike Golic Sr. and Jr. to Karl and Sam Ravech, Kevin Harlan and Olivia Harlan Dekker.
And the trend is nothing new, as Fox Sports, after luring the NFL away from CBS in the mid-1990s, hired three sons of famous play-by-play announcers: Joe Buck (son of Jack, voice of the St. Louis Cardinals and national football and baseball broadcasts), Kenny Albert (son of Marv, the legendary NBA play-by-play voice) and Thom Brennaman (son of Marty, the former voice of the Cincinnati Reds).
Like Fox three decades ago, NBC has shown a penchant for sports broadcasting from Collinsworth to Chris Simms, son of Phil, and Noah Eagle, son of Ian.
Collinsworth’s demotion further opened the door for Noah Eagle to continue rising. Eagle, who is just 27 years old, excelled in Big Ten Saturday primetime games and the NFL playoffs in his first season with NBC.
Next season and beyond, he and his analyst Todd Blackledge will continue in the Big Ten, but on any given week, if Notre Dame is the network’s marquee game, the duo will move on to that matchup.
Eagle has embarked on a path reminiscent of Buck’s, but the issue of nepotism in the cockpit is complicated.
When Joe Buck talks to kids who want to become sportscasters, he often falls back on an old joke.
“My advice is to start with a famous dad,” Buck said. The Athletic.
Buck is often cited as the quintessential example of nepotism in sports broadcasting, but he is also probably its biggest success story. His father, Jack Buck, is one of the most legendary broadcasters in history, and at 54, Joe has equaled, if not surpassed, his father in achievements.
Joe Buck has already narrated 24 World Series and six Super Bowls on television. Jack called two World Series and a Super Bowl in between, as well as being a constant soundtrack as a radio voice at both events.
Growing up in St. Louis, when Joe turned 6, he began studying how his father prepared for MLB and NFL broadcasts.
At age 12, Joe was broadcasting games on a tape recorder in an empty television booth in the press box at Busch Stadium. On the way home, he and his father would listen and Joe would learn. With Jack doing the reviews, it was as if a raspy-voiced Mozart was giving feedback to a teenage violinist.
Joe Buck (right), with Cris Collinsworth (left) and Troy Aikman at the call for Super Bowl XXXIX in Jacksonville, Florida, in February 2005. (Frank Micelotta/Getty Images)
At age 21, Buck was scheduled to be in the Cardinals’ main cabin, but before he could cancel a game, he had tears in his eyes.
He was still living at home when he opened St. Louis’ largest newspaper, the Post-Dispatch, and saw that his respected media critic, Dan Caesar, had written a column about how nepotism helped Buck get the job.
In June 1990, Caesar wrote: “The burning question is why is 21-year-old Joe Buck being forced to feed Cardinals fans? The reason is simple and it is spelled BUCK.”
It hurt Buck, but he knew it wasn’t bad.
“Although it broke my soul to read how unpleasant my hiring was, he was right,” Buck said. “I remember crying about it.”
Buck said he felt like he was in a race but he was starting behind the starting line. While he recognized that he had the advantages of an apprenticeship from an early age, he realized that he had the job largely because of his surname.
Over the years, although Buck has often come across as the most confident guy in the booth, that insecurity drove him (and still does) because he always knew there would be those who felt his accomplishments were due to Hall credentials. of his father’s Fame. .
“It was a gift I got from Dan: having a window into what people think,” Buck said. “It’s human nature. ‘Oh, well, we know how he got the job.’”
Today, with social media, it’s even harder, Buck said, because we’re all critics.
“It makes it very difficult to get your legs back,” Buck said.
Eagle has done well under the same NBC umbrella as Collinsworth, but that’s because he’s credible on broadcast.
“For Noah Eagle, it’s been meteoric, and he obviously worked very hard on this and put in the hours,” Buck said. “I think all of us (and it’s a big group) had the advantage of being around when we were kids. I think there is something to that.”
Noah Eagle first thought he wanted to be a sportscaster when he was 13 years old. Less than a decade later, he was sitting across from one of the richest people in the world, Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, for 90 minutes in a Seattle-area conference room, overlooking Mount Rainier and the Lake Washington, in an attempt to get a job on Ballmer’s broadcast team.
In college, Noah tried his best to be his own person, almost too much. Since his father and his mother, Alisa, attended Syracuse, he was reluctant to go there at first, but eventually decided it was the right place for him. However, once there, he tried to hide his last name from him. He would introduce himself simply as “Noah.”
“I wanted to be like Cher, Madonna or Beyoncé, you know. I just wanted to be ‘Noah,’ period,” Noah said.
He didn’t want the perception that any opportunity was due to his father, who is considered one of the best broadcasters in all of sports and will call the Final Four this year.
Halfway through Noah’s time in Syracuse, Ian told his son that he should accept who he is, not run away from it.
“I respected the fact that Noah wanted to be himself when he came to Syracuse, but I reminded him to be proud of his last name,” Ian said.
“For Noah Eagle, it’s been meteoric, and he obviously worked very hard on this and put in the hours,” says fellow broadcaster Joe Buck. (James Black/Icon Sportswire via AP Images)
As a senior, Noah earned the respect of Olivia Stomski, an Emmy Award-winning sports producer who runs the sports media center at Syracuse’s Newhouse School. He had a contact with the Clippers, who were looking for candidates after longtime television voice Ralph Lawler retired.
Stomski recommended Eagle and Eagle’s classmate Drew Carter, who is now on the Boston Celtics’ broadcast team. The Clippers liked each of his tapes, but preferred Eagle’s and invited him to Los Angeles for an initial interview.
Stomski said the Clippers knew it was Ian’s son, but they were deciding on Noah.
“I would say very little, if anything,” Stomski said when asked about Ian’s impact. “I know for a fact that they didn’t call Ian. Ian didn’t call anyone else. “If anyone was pushing, it was probably me.”
After Noah Eagle aced the first interview, he moved forward to meet Ballmer, the owner of the Clippers. The two went back and forth and Eagle even had the audacity to disagree with Ballmer on some points.
Eagle ended up getting the radio job, not the television one. He allowed him to have four years of play-by-play in the country’s second-largest market.
This has led to calls for Nickelodeon’s well-received Slimetime broadcasts, including for this year’s Super Bowl, and then landing NBC’s top college football job. He also calls games for Fox Sports.
Four years of 82 games on the radio and the playoffs gave the Eagle reps for the national stage. He then handed over the Clippers job.
“My biggest goal was to do a good enough job that other people would be more willing in the future to hire younger people,” Eagle said. “Basically I would go out and they would know that a 22-year-old can do this. And the proudest thing I’ve ever had, literally, didn’t come from the four years I was there. It was due to the fact that they hired another 22-year-old after me.”
At age 22, Carlo Jiménez, fresh out of USC, succeeded Eagle as the Clippers’ radio voice. Jiménez’s father is a professor in Santa Clara, teaching ceramics and working in academic consulting, while his mother is chief revenue officer for a tech startup. With an assist from Eagle, Jimenez quickly leveled the playing field and is perfecting the art of it on the big stage.
“I think it gives you a tremendous advantage,” Buck said of being the son of a famous sportscaster. “But then the question is: ‘What do you do with that?’”
(Top photo by Jac Collinsworth: Dylan Buell/Getty Images)
