When Mike Tirico left ESPN in 2016 for NBC Sports, it was a seismic move in the sports broadcasting industry. It signaled not only Tirico’s value as a broadcaster but also NBC’s plan for the foreseeable future.

NBC had an embarrassment of riches in sports broadcasting talent even before Tirico showed up. Bob Costas commanded the Olympic host chair, among many other roles, while Al Michaels was the voice of NBC’s Sunday Night Football coverage. While both were approaching the twilight of their storied TV careers, it would still be years before either stepped away from their primetime pulpits.

However, here came Tirico, who’d made his mark as ESPN’s voice of Monday Night Football while calling The Open, The Masters, the FIFA World Cup, and Wimbledon, just to name a few. His arrival coincided perfectly with NBC’s acquisition of the rights to Thursday Night Football, which it was then splitting with CBS.

With Michaels busy calling SNF, the logic followed that Tirico would become the new voice of TNF. Sure enough, reports started dropping that he’d be paired with Cris Collinsworth, giving NBC a one-two punch of NFL broadcasting booths.

However, somebody forgot to check with the 800-pound-gorilla in the room: The NFL.

On August 20, 2016, weeks before the season began, The New York Daily News reported that the NFL preferred a network’s “A” team to call Thursday Night Football. So when NBC presented its plan to the league, they pulled rank.

“They (Michaels and Collinsworth) are (NBC’s) number one team. So are (CBS’ Jim) Nantz and (Phil) Simms. We like the idea of having the same booth announcers from Sunday night and Sunday afternoon to carry over to Thursday,” Brian McCarthy, the NFL’s VP/Communications, said. “We’re hoping for that same magic Sunday Night Football has with Al and Cris to carry over to Thursday night.”

Our statement on NBC & Thursday Night Football pic.twitter.com/7rSeJvngLn

— Brian McCarthy (@NFLprguy) August 20, 2016

That was news to NBC, which had clearly had its plan in the works for some time.

“It’s a full-time job to do one game a week. It’s not just adding a three-hour broadcast. It’s a substantial amount of work,” NBC Sports Group President Mark Lazarus said earlier that year. “Nobody raised their hand and said, ‘I really want to do double the workload.’”

What the NFL wants, however, the NFL gets. And Tirico, who had been ESPN’s top NFL voice, suddenly found himself without a marquee broadcast to call his own.

“I thought I was going to be doing the Thursday games, but still, to this day, I don’t know how it all played out. But NBC was great about it,” Tirico told Awful Announcing last year. “As a matter of fact, it became one of the best things that ever happened for me because it allowed me to do the Notre Dame games.”

It’s true that while Tirico suddenly found himself firmly on NBC’s “B” team, he made the most of it. Along with calling Notre Dame football, he was able to check off a few other dream opportunities, including hosting NBC’s Triple Crown horse racing, Indianapolis 500 coverage, and the U.S. Open and Open Championship.

Ironically, Tirico did end up calling a few TNF games that season and even called a few SNF games later in the season, all of which were magically okay with the NFL. And the whole silly ordeal ended less than a year later, when the league reversed course and gave Tirico the green light to be the full-time TNF play-by-play voice.

“What was supposed to be was just the Thursdays; it didn’t turn out to be that,” Tirico said last September. “The pivot to Notre Dame ended up being life-impactful for me, and I still got the chance to do games on Thursdays and Sundays with Cris [Collinsworth]… The whole thing could not have worked out better. I’m glad it did, because otherwise, I wouldn’t have had that Notre Dame experience that I cherish to this day.”

All’s well that ends well for NBC and Tirico, one of the most dependable announcers working today. After waiting patiently, Tirico slid into the studio host role for Football Night in America and officially took over as the primetime host of NBC’s Olympics coverage, before finally becoming the voice of SNF in 2022.

This past year was the culmination of Tirico’s 10-year run with NBC so far, becoming NBC’s new NBA voice, hosting the Winter Olympics, and finally calling a Super Bowl (as well as being inducted into the National Sports Media Association’s Hall of Fame).

Not too shabby, especially after such an inauspicious start.