(By way of setting the ground rules, we have five main lists: NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL in the U.S. and NHL in Canada. There are also three other lists that exist only by combining those five: NHL totals, totals in the four American leagues, and totals in the five leagues across the board. Commentators are sorted into three groups – play-by-play, analysts and reporters – and each list has a total column as well. At the moment, these figures only count pro sports, not because I don't think college sports should count but because we had to draw the line somewhere because there are only so many hours to track this stuff. All data is taken from the 506 Sports Archive.)
The Nuggets-Warriors game on Thursday, Jan. 4 marked the 250th play-by-play appearance of Brian Anderson’s career, making him the 10th announcer to reach that point. The late game of the TNT doubleheader featured Anderson on the call with Stan Van Gundy and Allie LaForce.
One night later, Doris Burke worked her way out of another 10th-place spot on an NBA list, calling her 314th national game as an analyst to break the tie with Steve Kerr and move into ninth place outright. (Burke and Kerr had been tied since Christmas 2023.) The Knicks-76ers game that broke the tie included Mike Breen on play-by-play and Katie George courtside.
2024’s first edition of Hockey Night in Canada included an announcer milestone in the early window. Maple Leafs-Sharks marked Craig Simpson’s 1050th national NHL telecast to Canada: he was the second analyst to that mark, trailing only Harry Neale, and seventh person overall. Chris Cuthbert handled play-by-play for the game with Kyle Bukauskas reporting.
Another milestone later in the weekend was also sparked by HNIC, because Kelly Hrudey’s appearance on Rogers’ studio panel in Toronto pressed Greg Millen into service on the Flames-Blackhawks telecast on Sunday, Jan. 7, in Chicago. The matinee telecast (with Rick Ball on play-by-play and Ryan Leslie reporting) was Millen’s 900th national NHL telecast between the U.S. and Canada, becoming the seventh hockey analyst to reach that point and the eighth color person in any sport we track.
Two HNIC stalwarts moved up on the first weekend of the year, but another got passed, albeit on the gridiron. Fox’s Erin Andrews appeared on the sidelines of the Cowboys-Commanders season finale on Sunday, Jan. 7. That marked her 413th sideline appearance across our five main listings, which broke a tie with Elliotte Friedman for #13 on that list. Kevin Burkhardt, Greg Olsen and Tom Rinaldi rounded out the crew for America’s Game of the Week.
The third Hall of Famer taken in the 1984 NHL Entry Draft was, paradoxically, Tom Glavine, who would go on to win 305 games and win a World Series with the Braves of the 1990s. The third overall pick in that draft, Ed Olczyk, is one of three people to handle 900 American national NHL telecasts as the analyst after hitting the milestone on Wednesday, Jan. 10, with a Golden Knights-Avalanche contest alongside Kenny Albert and Brian Boucher.
The television history of soccer in the United States is less well-documented than some other sports, in part because it’s difficult to gauge exactly what constitutes a “major” competition (as opposed to something like the World Series, which was established 17 years before the first commercial radio broadcast). But the Premier League is undoubtedly the league with the highest combination of viewership and international prestige in the U.S. today, and we started counting their commentators when NBC took over American TV rights in 2013. On Sunday, Jan. 14, analyst Graeme le Saux became the second person in that span to appear on 400 telecasts when Manchester United hosted Tottenham Hotspur. Play-by-play man Jon Champion found out about this and informed le Saux on the air, which sparked a minute-long conversation about how everything has a statistic now. (Unfortunately, I haven’t figured out how to post the video clip without running into an automated PL copyright censor.)
Back on the west side of the Atlantic, intrepid ESPN reporter Lisa Salters handled her 694th and 695th sideline reports in our listings in January. The 694th game, which tied Dave Hodge for the fourth-most reports in our five main listings, was a Texans-Colts game on Saturday, Jan. 6, while the 695th game that passed him was the Eagles-Buccaneers wild-card matchup five days later. Joe Buck and Troy Aikman staffed the booth for both games.
When Jon Champion brought up announcer counting on Jan. 14, he probably didn’t have an inkling that he was a week away from his own milestone, but he was. Sunday, Jan. 21, marked his 190th Premier League telecast back to the U.S. in the NBC era: 190 might not seem like an exceptionally round number, but it marks 5 complete seasons for a single PL club (or half of an entire season across the league). He again shared the gantry with le Saux for the Bournemouth-Liverpool clash.
Later that weekend, another NBC stalwart unseated an immortal in his field, albeit not in that immortal’s most recognizable record. Sunday Night Football play-by-play voice Mike Tirico’s 571st national play-by-play telecast across the four major U.S. pro sports broke a tie with Pat Summerall for #19 on the all-time list. Despite being played on a Sunday afternoon, Buccaneers-Lions still counted after Rams-Lions had been the tying telecast on Jan. 14. Cris Collinsworth analyzed both games with Melissa Stark on the sideline.
On Wednesday, Jan. 24, the milestone trackers went back inside. TNT hockey voice Brendan Burke called his 155th national NHL telecast on the American side, a Hurricanes-Bruins tilt with Jennifer Botterill and Boucher, to pass Pat Foley for 15th after tying him on Wild-Stars two weeks earlier. On the hardwood, ESPN mainstay Mike Breen called Suns-Mavericks that night with Doris Burke analyzing and Cassidy Hubbarth courtside: the game was Breen’s 1082nd in the four major U.S. pro sports, breaking a tie with Mike Emrick for the eighth-most on record. Breen had tied Emrick with a Mavericks-Lakers game on Jan. 17.
If Breen’s voice is synonymous with ESPN’s NBA coverage in 2024, his TNT counterpart is Kevin Harlan, who has a history in both kinds of inflatable leather balls thanks to also having decades of NFL experience. Those figures combined to push Harlan to his 1,392nd career national telecast on Thursday, Jan. 25, which passed Pierre McGuire for fifth-most across our five main listings. The tiebreaking game was a Celtics-Heat contest with Reggie Miller and Allie LaForce. (Yes, we realize the irony in a hockey announcer getting passed in a game involving the Heat.) The Grizzlies and Timberwolves played Harlan’s tying game on Jan. 18.
Not to be outdone, the Calgary Flames find themselves in the seemingly-contradictory position of merging fire and ice in the same sport, and they hosted a milestone game on Saturday, Jan. 27. The Chicago-Calgary tilt on the latter half of HNIC marked Scott Oake’s 1250th national NHL telecast, all as a reporter: he was the first reporter in any sport to reach that mark, and among all flavors of commentator he sat fifth on the NHL list and 10th in the five main listings. Ball and Millen helmed the booth at the Saddledome.
The final NFL milestone of the 2023-24 season came Sunday, Jan. 28, in the AFC championship between the Chiefs and Ravens. Tracy Wolfson, CBS’s lead sideline reporter, worked her 266th game across the four main U.S. pro sports to pass Tom Verducci for 13th on that list. (Verducci also has even more MLB telecasts under his belt as an analyst, but those don’t count toward his reporter total here.) Wolfson had tied Verducci a week earlier with the Chiefs-Ravens divisional game. Jim Nantz and Tony Romo called both games.
A pair of NHL milestones snuck in under the wire on the last day of January. Sportsnet reporter Shawn McKenzie passed Al Trautwig for the 17th-most reporter appearances on our five main lists (192) when he handled Senators-Red Wings with Harnarayan Singh and Garry Galley. Olczyk pushed his total to 904 total games, the 13th-most across all three commentator flavors in America, and passed Craig Sager when he called Kings-Predators with Albert and Boucher. (McKenzie had tied Trautwig on Canadiens-Penguins the previous weekend while Olczyk matched Sager on the Blackhawks-Kraken game Jan. 24.)
Four commentators (Simpson, Bukauskas, A.J. Mleczko and Dan Murphy) ended January in ties that we will cover when the series moves on to February.
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