Nepotism in sports broadcasting: ‘A huge advantage’, but ‘what to do with it?’

When Jac Collinsworth, at just 27 years old, debuted in the prestigious job as NBC’s play-by-play voice for Notre Dame football in September 2022, he succeeded one of the most decorated announcers in sports, Mike Tirico .

Being given such a position suggested he was a sports reporting prodigy, but from his first game — when Marshall upset Notre Dame — Collinsworth didn’t sound like he deserved the national stage in the role. He lacked precision and rhythm, and he kept saying, “Mmm, hmm,” a bad habit usually eradicated by years of practice.

The focus on Collinsworth only grew last year, especially during a flat performance with his partner Jason Garrett during a primetime game between Notre Dame and USC in October.

At the root of all the criticism is that Collinsworth’s father, Cris, is NBC’s top NFL analyst, appearing on “Sunday Night Football” and in five Super Bowl broadcasts. Jac also appears on the SNF pregame show as an on-site reporter/host, among other roles with the network.

Every son or daughter who joins the family business is labeled nepotism. Jac Collinsworth was no different, but attention grew as he floundered.

Although Collinsworth, after graduating from Notre Dame in 2017, found success at ESPN as a reporter and then on the sidelines and as a host for NBC Sports, his failure at the Fighting Irish Games left the man responsible for the move in first, Sam Flood, the president of production for NBC Sports, to finally remove Collinsworth from the role last month, admitting his mistake because Collinsworth did not yet have the required play-by-play reps for such a big assignment.

Jac Collinsworth, Cris Collinsworth and Flood all declined requests to be interviewed.

Sports reporting is filled with father-and-son stories about succession. There are more successes than failures – and to be clear, Jac Collinsworth shouldn’t be placed in either category just yet; especially at age 29. He’s just not alone.

This offseason, the A’s in Oakland hired 24-year-old Chris Caray, a fourth-generation broadcaster dating back to his great-grandfather Harry. In Toronto, 23-year-old Ben Shulman, son of Dan, joins the Blue Jays radio booth just a door away from his father, who is calling TV for the team along with his ESPN work.

There is a long list of sons and daughters following their parents into sports reporting, from Mike Golic Sr. and Jr. to Karl and Sam Ravech to Kevin Harlan and Olivia Harlan Dekker.

And the trend is nothing new, as Fox Sports, after luring the NFL from CBS in the mid-1990s, hired three sons of famous play-by-play broadcasters: Joe Buck (son of Jack, voice of the St. Louis Cardinals and national football and baseball broadcasts), Kenny Albert (son of Marv, the legendary play-by-play voice of the NBA) 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 reporting descendants, 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 only 27, excelled in Big Ten Saturday primetime games and the NFL playoffs in his first season at NBC.

Next season and beyond, he and his analyst, Todd Blackledge, will continue with the Big Ten, but if Notre Dame is the top game on the network in a given week, the duo will switch to that matchup.

Eagle has taken a path reminiscent of Buck’s, but the issue of nepotism in the booth is complicated.

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When Joe Buck talks to kids who want to be sportscasters, he often falls back on an old joke.

“My advice is to start with a famous father,” Buck said The Athletics.

Buck is often cited as the ultimate example of nepotism in sports reporting, but he is also probably its greatest success story. His father, Jack Buck, is one of the most legendary play-by-play announcers in history and at the age of 54, Joe has equaled, if not surpassed, his father.

Joe Buck has already called 24 World Series and six Super Bowls on TV. Jack called two World Series and one Super Bowl on the medium, while also providing a constant soundtrack as a radio voice on both events.

Growing up in St. Louis, Joe began studying how his father prepared for MLB and NFL broadcasts by the time he turned six.

At age 12, Joe was calling games into a tape recorder in an empty TV booth in the press box at Busch Stadium. On the way home, he and his father listened back and Joe learned from it. As Jack did the reviews, it was like a raspy Mozart giving feedback to a teenage violinist.

At 21, Buck was supposed to be in the Cardinals’ main lineup, 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 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, at age 21, is Joe Buck being force-fed to Cardinals fans? The reason is simple: it is spelled BUCK.”

It hurt Buck, but he knew it wasn’t wrong.

“Although it crushed my soul to read how unpleasant my hiring was, he was right,” Buck said. “I remember crying about it.”

Buck said it felt like he was in a race, but he started behind the starting line. Although he realized that he had the benefits of an internship from an early age, he realized that he owed the job in large part to his last name.

Over the years, even though Buck has often proven to be the most confident man in the booth, that insecurity drove him – and still does – because he always knew there would be those who felt his achievements were due to the Hall of Fame credentials from his father. .

“It was a gift Dan gave me to understand what people think,” Buck said. “It’s human nature. “Oh well, we know how he got the job.”

These days with social media, it’s even harder, Buck said, because everyone is a critic.

“It makes it really hard to get your legs,” Buck said.

Eagle has done well under the same NBC umbrella as Collinsworth, but that’s because he was credible on air.

“For Noah Eagle, he was great, and he obviously worked really hard on this and put in the hours,” Buck said. “I think all of us – and it’s a big group – had the benefit of being involved as children. I think there’s something to that.”

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Noah Eagle first thought he wanted to be a sportscaster at the age of 13. Less than a decade later, he sat for 90 minutes before one of the richest people in the world — Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer — in a Seattle-area conference room overlooking Mount Rainier and Lake Washington, trying to get a job available from the Ballmer broadcast team.

In college, Noah tried hard to be his own person – almost too much. Because his father and his mother, Alisa, both went to Syracuse, he was initially hesitant to go there, but eventually decided it was the right place for him. But when he got there, he tried to hide his last name. He would introduce himself as just ‘Noah’.

“I wanted to be like Cher or Madonna or Beyonce, you know. “I just wanted to be ‘Noah’, period,” Noah said.

He didn’t want to get the impression that every opportunity was down to his father, who is considered one of the best broadcasters in all of sports and will call this year’s Final Four.

Midway through Noah’s stay in Syracuse, Ian told his son to embrace who he is, not run away from it.

“I respected the fact that Noah wanted to be his own person when he arrived at Syracuse, but reminded him to be proud of his last name,” Ian said.

By his senior year, Noah had the respect of Olivia Stomski, an Emmy Award-winning sports producer who directs the sports media center at Newhouse School in Syracuse. She was in contact with the Clippers, who were looking for suitors after longtime TV play-by-play voice Ralph Lawler retired.

Stomski recommended Eagle and Drew Carter, Eagle’s classmate who is now on the Boston Celtics broadcast crew. The Clippers liked each of their tapes, but preferred Eagle’s and invited him to Los Angeles for an initial interview.

Stomski said the Clippers knew this was Ian’s son, but it was Noah they chose.

“I would say very little or none,” Stomski said when asked about Ian’s impact. “I’m sure they didn’t call Ian. Ian didn’t call anyone else. If anyone was pushing, it was probably me.”

After Noah Eagle completed the first interview, he went to Ballmer, the owner of the Clippers. The two went back and forth, with Eagle even having the chance to disagree with Ballmer on some points.

Eagle ended up getting the radio job, not the TV job. It allowed him to do play-by-play for four years in the country’s second-largest market.

This led to Nickelodeon’s well-received Slimetime broadcasts, including for this year’s Super Bowl, and subsequently landing NBC’s top college football job. He is also called games for Fox Sports.

The four years of 82 games on the radio and the playoffs gave Eagle the reps for the national stage. He then handed over the Clippers job.

“My biggest goal was to do my job so well that other people would be more willing to hire younger people in the future,” Eagle said. “I would actually go out there and they would know that a 22-year-old could pull this off. And so the most pride I’ve had literally didn’t come from the four years I was there. It was because they had hired another 22-year-old boy after me.”

At 22, Carlo Jiménez, straight out of USC, succeeded Eagle as the radio voice of the Clippers. Jiménez’s father is a professor at Santa Clara, teaching ceramics and working in academic consulting, while his mother is the Chief Revenue Officer for a technology startup. With Eagle’s help, Jiménez has quickly leveled the playing field and is honing his craft on a big stage.

“I think it gives you a huge advantage,” Buck said of being the son of a famous sportscaster. “But then the question is: ‘What do you do with it?’”

(Top photo by Jac Collinsworth: Dylan Buell/Getty Images)