Since Mike TIrico began his career at ESPN in the 1990’s, he has had the opportunity to work with many different analysts across multiple networks. Working with different analysts can lead to a different approach in calling the game.
On this week’s episode of The Dave Pasch Podcast, Pasch had one of his mentors from Syracuse on the show in Tirico. Pasch brought that he got the chance to work with Bill Walton in 2006 since Mike Tirico was doing Monday Night Football (Tirico called NBA games with Jon Barry and Walton for ESPN). Tirico mentioned he learned that while sometimes you have to get Walton back into the game, you have to give the analyst a chance to be himself.
“With Walton, I learned that the hard way. I’d sit there and Bill would just go,” Mike Tirico said. “I’m like what are we doing, the producers have to show the viewers, and Bill was in Bill world. When you just gotta do it in a loving way, Bill is grateful that you do it. You kind of get him back to the game every once in a while, but you give him the space to have the canvas to be so enjoyable.”
It was all part of a conversation on how Mike Tirico is able to work with different analysts with different levels of experience and he feels that regardless of how much experience the person has next to him in the booth, being a play-by-play announcer requires making sure the analyst is the best they can be.
For Tirico, it is important to give back to his alma mater at Syracuse because of how people like Dick Stockton, Bob Costas, and Marv Albert came back to Syracuse when he was a student to share their experience. During that time, Mike Tirico has seen the industry grow to the point where people can root for each other to succeed.
“The thing continues to grow, so we don’t have to be fighting over the same jobs. There are a lot more jobs out there than there used to be. I just enjoy being able to share a little bit of my experience with folks and kind of give back because I felt like along the way, people were kind to a kid in his 20’s who didn’t know what he was doing to help me out.”
