Announcer Milestones from (Most Of) March 2024

For as much as March seems to be dominated by basketball in the sports media landscape, the announcing milestones of the month seem to be dominated by hockey. What chaos, as Mike Emrick used to say. Some of you might even call it … madness. (This post will conclude with the games of Sunday, March 24, which is the last Sunday before Major League Baseball entered the chat with its 2024 season.)

For the sake of 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 first installment of this series covers January 2024 and can be found here. The second, which deals with February as you might expect, is here.

Speaking of Emrick, he was the first person to get passed this month. Craig Simpson, the lead Hockey Night in Canada colour commentator since 2008, called a Rangers-Maple Leafs telecast on Saturday, March 2, for his 1,082nd national NHL telecast between the U.S. and Canada. That broke a tie with Emrick for seventh place on that leaderboard. Simpson created the tie a week earlier with the Maple Leafs’ visit to Colorado. Chris Cuthbert and Kyle Bukauskas joined Simpson for both games.

Moments after the Rangers-Maple Leafs game ended, another Hockey Night stalwart hit a milestone of his own, although this one was a round number rather than forging or breaking a tie. The Penguins’ visit to Calgary marked Greg Millen’s 900th national NHL telecast to Canada as an analyst, making him the fourth colour man to the nonacentennial plateau (trailing Simpson, Harry Neale and Dick Irvin). Harnarayan Singh handled play-by-play and Scott Oake reported.

The next milestone didn’t belong to an individual announcer but the history of Canadian hockey broadcasting as a whole. On Sunday afternoon, March 3, Sportsnet 360 picked up the TNT telecast of the Devils’ visit to Los Angeles, and the play-by-play announcer for that game, Kenny Albert, became the 35,000th commentator entered in the Canadian NHL listings. As of this writing, Albert accounts for close to 1 percent of all the commentator entries in our five main listings (and his father Marv accounts for close to another 1 percent), so this is not his first rodeo on the milestone listings. Ed Olczyk and Brian Boucher worked the game with the younger Albert and followed him into the history books.

Like a trailing point on a railroad track, Rogers reporters Ryan Leslie and Shawn McKenzie combined to move past Brian Engblom as two movements merged into one over the first full week of March. Engblom served as a reporter for 197 national NHL telecasts, mostly on ESPN in the 1990s and early 2000s, and that total ranked 16th on the binational list of NHL reporters. Then it didn’t. On Monday, March 4, McKenzie matched Engblom’s total when he worked a Bruins-Maple Leafs telecast with Cuthbert and Simpson. Before that game had quite finished, Leslie created a three-way tie by reporting on the Kraken-Flames game alongside Rick Ball and Kelly Hrudey. In fact, the Sportsnet audience watching McKenzie’s game would go on to join Leslie’s game in progress. McKenzie finished the pass on Wednesday, March 6, with a Sabres-Maple Leafs game called by the same crew, and Leslie passed Engblom the next night on Flames-Lightning with Millen in for Hrudey.

Back on the basketball court, TNT analyst Stan Van Gundy combined with his brother Jeff, who analyzed 15 NBA Finals for ABC, to reach the 1,000-game plateau in their announcing careers. As of the Celtics-Nuggets game on March 7, which the elder Stan called with Brian Anderson and Chris Haynes, Jeff had worked 857 national telecasts and Stan 143 to rack up 1,000. At that point, another TNT analyst had combined with his sister to work 1,097 games: Reggie Miller had called 664 games and Cheryl Miller 433.

Jeff Van Gundy’s longtime partner, Mike Breen, moved up the overall total list on Saturday, March 9. Breen called his 1,090th national telecast, passing Emrick for #13, when ABC televised a Celtics-Suns game from Phoenix in their weekend primetime slot that saw Breen work with Doris Burke, JJ Redick and Lisa Salters. Breen had forged the tie three nights earlier on an ESPN telecast of Bucks-Warriors with Bob Myers and Jorge Sedano.

Further west, McKenzie hit a milestone the same night as he became the 16th person to report on 200 NHL telecasts between the U.S. and Canada. John Shorthouse and Jamal Mayers were in the booth for the puckhandling plateau, which aired on Citytv and Sportsnet One.

TNT’s lead NBA play-caller, Kevin Harlan, spent Pi Day bringing home the bacon in Boston, where it may well have been a clam chowder ingredient. The second Suns-Celtics meeting in six days was his 1,400th national telecast among the four major pro sports, covering the NFL and NBA in Harlan’s case. He became the third announcer to hit that milestone in the United States, trailing Marv Albert and Dick Stockton; including Canada, Bob Cole and Cuthbert have also done so, although Cuthbert has not yet reached that point on play-by-play alone. Reggie Miller and Allie LaForce joined Harlan on the broadcast.

Back on the left coast, another TNT play-by-play announcer moved up, although this particular telecast aired in Canada on Sportsnet East, Ontario and Pacific. The Massachusetts-born John Forslund called his 448th national NHL telecast on play-by-play, breaking a tie with Dan Kelly, who hailed from Ottawa but drew acclaim as the voice of the St. Louis Blues. Forslund worked the Capitals-Kraken game for the Kraken local feed with JT Brown, Alison Lukan and Piper Shaw, and had joined Brown and Shaw two nights earlier for the tying game against the Golden Knights.

Citytv and Sportsnet One were home to an NHL reporting milestone for the second straight Saturday on March 16 when Leslie became the 17th rinkside rover to report on 200 national telecasts between the U.S. and Canada, repeating McKenzie’s feat of a week earlier. Ball and Millen staffed the booth for a Canadiens-Flames affair that also aired on CBC.

Later that night on CBC, longtime reporter Scott Oake moved up the NHL listings with his 1,256th telecast, passing Dick Irvin for fourth place. The Avalanche-Oilers contest also aired on three of the four Sportsnet regional channels (everything but Pacific) alongside Sportsnet 360 with Singh and Louie DeBrusk on the call. Oake had tied Irvin a week earlier when the Canucks hosted the Jets on CBC, City, Sportsnet, Sportsnet One and Sportsnet 360; on that game, Dave Tomlinson was in the analyst chair rather than DeBrusk.

Another Hockey Night veteran passed a third fixture of winter Saturday nights north of the border, although it happened on a Wednesday when the Maple Leafs visited Washington on March 20. Chris Cuthbert’s 1,309th national NHL play-by-play call (combining the two countries we track) passed Jim Hughson for second-most on record, trailing Cole. Simpson handled color duties and McKenzie reported for Sportsnet. Simpson and Bukauskas were with Cuthbert four nights earlier on the same network when he tied Hughson as the Hurricanes visited Toronto.

South of the border, Darren Pang worked his 800th national NHL telecast (again combining the two countries) on the same Maple Leafs-Capitals game. In the United States, the telecast aired on TNT with Brendan Burke on the call and Tarik El-Bashir reporting.

While much of America was preoccupied with college basketball, the longtime voice of the NHL team near Tobacco Road hit an NHL milestone on Friday, March 22, as Forslund’s call of the Kraken’s visit to Arizona was his 450th national telecast between the United States and Canada. Only 11 other play-by-play voices have hit that number. Sportsnet picked up the Seattle telecast with Forslund, Brown and Shaw. (Incidentally, this is the last milestone telecast to date involving the Coyotes, who played their last game on April 17 before their franchise was suspended and its hockey-related assets transferred to Utah.)

Cuthbert wrapped up this edition of the milestone tracker on Saturday, March 23, which would have been the 95th birthday of Roger Bannister, the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. Cuthbert’s 1,310th national NHL play-by-play telecast between the United States and Canada passed Hughson again – Hughson picked up a single MLB telecast for ABC in 1994, so his total in our five main listings is 1,309, one more than the NHL total Cuthbert passed on March 20. That March 20 game, covered above, was Cuthbert’s tying telecast here.

At the close of that week, with baseball season looming on the horizon, Burke and Oake sat in ties that would not be broken until the next edition of this series.

Announcer Milestones from January 2024

It’s high time to do some accounting around here, in the form of spelling out the 15 announcer milestones that happened in January on the way to 192, and counting, in 2024. There are parts of the year where we can cover a lot of ground pretty quickly on that front: anything between about Father’s Day and Labor Day is, after all, the offseason in basketball, football and hockey. January is not one of those times, which is why I’m currently staring down the prospect of writing eight or nine more of these to finish the year. So let’s get started.

 
(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.

Twenty-Five National Television Announcer Milestones From Aug. 23 to Sept. 22

Somewhere around Aug. 23, it looks like we quit updating the Twitter feed as new announcer milestones got reached. That happened for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the unprecedented month-long convergence of all four major pro sports plus MLS.

The record-keeping hasn't stopped, though, and now we present a 24-pack of announcer milestones that happened since then. Plus a bonus one at the end because there were actually 25.

(I really should knock the dust off this blog more often rather than trying to compress everything into 280 characters on Twitter...)

Totals updated through the close of the day on Sept. 20, 2020, and also include Monday Night Football on Sept. 21.

1. August 24: Ed Olczyk becomes the sixth person to call 750 American national telecasts of National Hockey League games.

2. August 24: Pierre McGuire calls his 1,300th national NHL telecast between the U.S. and Canada. He's the second person to reach that milestone, trailing Bob Cole. Widening the scope to all four major professional sports, Cole and McGuire are joined in the 1300 club by Marv Albert and Dick Stockton (with Jim Hughson approaching).

3. August 24: McGuire's 1300th game between the U.S. and Canada was also his 909th American national telecast. That tied him with Mike Breen for the 11th-most in our records. (McGuire passed Breen outright with Canucks-Golden Knights on Aug. 25, although "passed" is relative because Breen is very much still active,)

4. August 25: With the Canucks-Golden Knights game, Louie DeBrusk makes his 204th appearance as an NHL colour commentator on a Canadian network. That ties Mickey Redmond for 15th in our records. DeBrusk completes the pass with his 205th game, Avalanche-Stars, the next day.

5. August 26: The Lightning-Bruins game was Olczyk's 750th American national telecast of an NHL game as a color commentator. (The difference between this and no. 1 is that the former listing includes two games as a sideline reporter.)

6. August 26: With Lightning-Bruins, Mike Emrick calls his 1,074th game on our overall master list — all three flavors of announcer, all four major pro sports, including Canada. That ties Harry Neale for 12th on that list. Emrick completes the pass when the two teams meet on Aug. 29.

7. August 26: The Flyers' game against the Islanders is the 894th time that team has appeared on an American network, matching the Red Wings for the most by an NHL team. Philadelphia completes the pass three days later.

8. August 29: The NBC hockey analyst of the present ties NBC's baseball analyst of a generation ago. Ed Olczyk analyzes his 766th game (Lightning-Bruins), matching the number of MLB telecasts with which Tony Kubek is credited. That's tied for 10th-most on our list of analysts across the U.S. and Canada. Edzo completes the pass with Flyers-Islanders the next night. (This milestone counts games on both sides of the international border. There is about to be another, similar milestone counting only U.S. telecasts.)

9. August 30: Baseball breaks into a list that has thus far been a bunch of hockey. Ron Darling becomes the tenth man to call 250 national MLB telecasts as an analyst when he breaks down the Yankees and Mets on TBS.

10. August 30: The Avalanche-Stars game double-dips on the milestone tracker. Kenny Albert calls his 300th NHL telecast for the United States, becoming the 13th person overall and seventh play-by-play announcer to reach that milestone. The game is also his 1,138th on the overall master list (all three flavors of announcer, all four major pro sports, including Canada), tying Scott Oake of Hockey Night in Canada for 10th place. Albert completes the pass of Oake later that night with Golden Knights-Canucks.

11. August 30: Sunday Night Baseball hits the City of Brotherly Love and Matt Vasgersian calls his 300th national MLB telecast as the play-by-play man. He's the 14th man to reach that plateau.

12. September 5: John Forslund becomes the fifth man to handle play-by-play of 350 NHL telecasts for an American national audience when he calls Islanders-Flyers. He's the 14th person to get there if you include Canada, and the 11th person to get to 350 American NHL games in any flavor of commentary.

13. September 5: With no regard for human life, the Nuggets-Lakers game is the 1,200th appearance by Kevin Harlan on our American master list (all three flavors of announcer, all four major pro sports, but not including Canada). All of those appearances are as the play-by-play announcer, and he's the third person to reach that milestone, behind Dick Stockton and Marv Albert. If you expand to Canada, he's fifth, also trailing Bob Cole and Jim Hughson. If you expand to color/colour commentators and include Canada, Pierre McGuire also tops him (see no. 2).

14. September 7: Craig Simpson calls his 850th NHL telecast in Canada, all as the colour commentator. The game in question is Islanders-Lightning. He's the third colour man to 850, trailing Harry Neale and Dick Irvin, and the eighth to 850 in Canada overall.

15. September 9: Jeff Van Gundy analyzes his 700th NBA national telecast, becoming the sixth person to broadcast 700 NBA games and the first person not named Hubie Brown to do color on that many.

16. September 11: John Forslund ties Dave Randorf for 13th on the NHL play-by-play list combining the U.S. and Canada. His 353rd game, bringing him level, is Lightning-Islanders on the 11th. His 354th game, completing the pass, is Golden Knights-Stars the next night.

17. September 11: Reggie Miller ties Mike Fratello for the fifth-most appearances on national television as an NBA game analyst, working his 517th game when the Nuggets play the Clippers. With the break between series, it takes him a week to finish the pass, until the 18th, by which time the Nuggets are playing the Lakers. Fratello was also holding down the no. 10 spot on the NBA's overall leaderboard, which Reggie now holds as well.

18. September 13: With her first NFL game of the season, Cardinals-49ers at Levi's Stadium, Laura Okmin passes Al Trautwig for 18th place on our master American sideline reporter list (all four major pro sports). The appearance is Okmin's 191st and also allows her to tie Tom Verducci for no. 17; she passes Verducci with the Rams-Eagles game a week later.

19. September 13: The leading lady of Sunday Night Football, Michele Tafoya, makes her 492nd appearance on our American sideline reporter list (all four major pro sports). That ties Jim Gray for fourth-most, trailing Craig Sager, Ken Rosenthal and Lisa Salters. Tafoya passes Gray a week later with Patriots-Seahawks.

20: September 14: Lisa Salters ties Bonnie Bernstein for the seventh-most sideline appearances in NFL TV records with her 141st on the Titans-Broncos game. She finishes the pass with the second week of Monday Night Football on Sept. 21.

21. September 15: Brian Boucher ties Joe Micheletti for sixth place on the American NHL analyst list with his 267th game. He passes Micheletti two days later. Both games are Islanders-Lightning.

22. September 17: Combining totals between the U.S. and Canada, Ed Olczyk ties former Hockey Night in Canada lead man Bill Hewitt with his 780th national telecast. Olczyk equalizes with the final Islanders-Lightning game, then passes Hewitt for 16th outright on Sept. 19 ... speaking of which ...

23. September 19: The opener of the Stanley Cup Final is Mike Emrick's 1050th game as a play-by-play announcer on our master list (all four major pro sports including Canada), He's the ninth person to get there.

24. September 22: With Game 3 of the NBA Western Conference Final, Brian Anderson calls his 116th national NBA telecast. That ties Dan Shulman for 16th among play-by-play announcers.

25. September 22: Rick Sutcliffe, ESPN's most experienced MLB analyst, calls his 576th national telecast; John Madden also called 576 national NFL telecasts during a career that spanned all four major broadcast networks from 1979-2008. The two men are tied for 12th on the analyst leaderboard across all four major pro sports and will be until Sutcliffe works again. Sutcliffe's total is also fourth-most among MLB color guys, falling in a big gap between Tony Kubek (766) and John Smoltz (398).

Regular Twitter service will now resume.

Announcer Milestones From The Fourth Quarter Of 2017

(Not actually me, but it could be.)
Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.5.

Cycling through another round of biweekly database updates, I note that we haven't given some milestones their due recently, either on the blog or on Twitter. So without further ado, here are a couple of handfuls of updates on the vital statistics of several announcers, teams and networks. They're presented in chronological order.

(Standard disclaimer: Announcer totals contained herein come from the lists maintained at The 506 Forums (free registration required to view). As always, you can see the top 16 in each category on our TV databases page.)

October 4 - When the puck drops on the NHL's centennial season, Mike Emrick becomes the first American announcer to handle 900 play-by-play broadcasts for that league on national television. The broadcast pulled him within 71 games of former partner Bill Clement for the most in (American) NHL history.

As of this post (December 17), you could combine the totals of the next five active play-by-play announcers and you'd still be short of Emrick's 910 games; that math also counts Sam Rosen as "active" based strictly on their local work, as his last national gig outside of simulcasts was on the network then called VS. in 2011.

October 17 - The NBA's season opener gets right to work rewriting the record books, as Kevin Harlan's 671st national telecasts pushes him past the number we have confirmed for Doug Collins. By that measure, Harlan is fifth all-time; in truth, he's probably not there quite yet. 

(Collins worked for TNT in the early 1990s, which is one of the eras where the listings I'm working off of are not quite complete. Based on the confirmations posted to The506 Forums and the interpolations of the late John Moynihan, his final total is somewhere in the 690s, which puts Harlan on track to get there around the All-Star break.)

October 21 - Scott Oake becomes the seventh documented announcer to call 1,000 NHL games in Canada, and the first to do so as a host and/or rinkside reporter, with the Wild-Flames matchup from Calgary.

The figures for Ron MacLean merit, at the least, an honorable mention here because of the way records were kept as the role of the Hockey Night In Canada host evolved. 

From 1957 until the mid-1990s, each game had its own host that handled player interviews and between-periods segments; this person is credited on each game broadcast. In about 1996, CBC shifted to having a singular central studio for all of its games: even though the studio is in Toronto, which often hosts one of the games, that led to the introduction of a second person to do interviews, which is the one credited for those games.

After racking up more than 500 games in the older role, MacLean shifted into the studio in the mid-90s. If you count his time as host, often on the order of 50 or 60 games a year, he'd be well beyond Oake and into Bob Cole territory (see Dec. 5 below).

In each of our other databases, studio hosts aren't recorded; however, the three-act structure of a hockey game means that the intermission host gets more face time than the halftime host in basketball or football -- and that's especially true if a game goes beyond regulation, which can happen ad infinitum in the league's most visible games. So I'm not sure how to weigh those factors against one another.

(At a far more practical level, I don't have record of who the studio hosts were on a night-by-night basis beginning in 1996-97, so I can't properly credit them even if that route makes sense.)

November 1 - Mike Breen's call of the Rockets-Knicks game makes him the second person in NBA history to do play-by-play of 750 nationally-televised games, trailing only Marv Albert. 

Breen's average is in the neighborhood of 50 games a year, which would put him on pace to catch Albert's current mark (1,014 games) in the 2022-23 season. Of course, that's subject to the small matter that Albert is still an active NBA broadcaster doing about 40 games a year, but that in turn is subject to the fact that Albert turned 76½ last Tuesday. (Happy half-birthday, Marv.) Breen is 56.

Aside from Breen and Albert, Hubie Brown is the only person confirmed to have called 750 NBA games on national TV. Brown has 964 games under his belt. Craig Sager probably joins them: I have 746 sideline appearances for the man they called "America's sideline reporter," but that doesn't include courtside data for much of the 2006-07 or 2007-08 seasons, which means his total is more likely in the 800 range.

December 5 - The Rangers-Penguins affair from Pittsburgh marked the 800th time that the Broadway Blueshirts showed up on American national television. Only the Red Wings (870) and Flyers (829) have more such games.

(The Canadiens got their 500th American appearance on December 16, but I'm not giving that a full entry here because Canadian NHL telecasts have their own listings.)

December 8 - A Celtics-Spurs telecast from San Antonio is the 1,500th NBA game on record for ESPN. That figure includes 102 games from the cable network's first NBA contract (1982-84), but not the 60 games that have gotten shunted to other ESPN networks since 2002.

(For purposes of comparison, TNT's 2,500th game was Game 5 of the 2017 Eastern Conference Final; ABC's Christmas slate will start with game number 692 overall for them and game number 489 under the modern set of contracts.)

December 9 - Bob Cole, Canada's dean of hockey broadcasters, works his 1,700th NHL telecast as the Jets face the Lightning in Tampa. No other announcer in our five databases can boast even three-fourths of Cole's total, and the one that comes closest—Dick Irvin—retired in 1999.

December 11 - Lisa Salters becomes the 10th person to handle the sidelines for 100 NFL games when she works the Patriots-Dolphins Monday Night game for ESPN. (She also makes a lot of us wish we were in Miami in December, but that's beside the point.)

December 17 - The Vancouver Canucks become the first NHL expansion team to reach the national airwaves 1,000 times in Canada. They would likely prefer not to discuss the result of that game.

...and with that, we've caught back up.

In addition to the Kevin Harlan eclipse of Doug Collins mentioned earlier, the next several weeks figure to bring milestones for Ian Eagle, Dan Fouts, Greg Gumbel, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. Reggie Miller, Mark Jackson, Hubie Brown; Mike Emrick, Pierre McGuire and Ed Olczyk; and Jim Hughson, Oake, Greg Millen, John Garrett and Paul Romanuk, should be on tap in the new year as well. 

A (Proverbial) NFL Quarter-Century Of Kevin Harlan, And Other Stories

(Standard disclaimer: These announcer totals come from the lists maintained at The 506 Forums (free registration required to view); in this post, we're working with data posted by John Moynihan and Tim Brulia. And as always, you can see the top 16 in each category on our TV databases page.)

(CBS file photo)

Barring the unexpected, Kevin Harlan will become the seventh man to handle play-by-play duties for 400 NFL telecasts—the equivalent of 25 full seasons for an NFL team since 1978—when the Broncos and Raiders kick off in Oakland at 4:25 p.m. EST this afternoon.

The son of Bob Harlan, who spent 19 years as chief operating officer of the Green Bay Packers, Kevin made his NFL debut alongside Joe Namath on an NBC telecast of a Patriots-Colts game in week 1 of the 1991 season while Tom Hammond worked the track and field world championships in Japan.

Harlan took on his first regular NFL national gig in 1994, moving to Fox as that network took on NFC rights. His first NFC game brought the Milwaukee native back to Wisconsin for a Vikings-Packers season opener on Labor Day weekend. After working 65 games at Fox (63 of those with Jerry Glanville) in a four-year span, he jumped ship to CBS in 1998.

In almost 20 seasons with CBS, Harlan has worked with 11 different partners: his most common sidekick, Rich Gannon, will join him for the 112th time this afternoon. Solomon Wilcots (84 games), Randy Cross (71), Glanville and Sam Wyche (35) round out his most common partners.

Harlan's work has taken him to each of the 32 NFL markets that have hosted a team since 2015, including visits to both the Rams and Chargers since their westerly moves of the past two years. While he made two visits to Anaheim Stadium for the Rams' final season there in 1994, he did not catch the Raiders at the L.A. Coliseum; despite working for the network that broadcast the opposite conference, he did get a trip to Memphis for a Washington-Tennessee game in 1997.

In addition to the 33 aforementioned U.S. markets, Harlan has gone abroad three times, once to Toronto (Dolphins-Bills in 2008) and twice to London (Bills-Jaguars in 2015 and Giants-Rams last season). He also handled play-by-play for the most recent successful drop-kick in NFL history, a Doug Flutie extra-point try on New Year's Day 2006 that I remember way too well for it to have been almost 12 years ago.

Harlan started his broadcasting career in Kansas City, spending two years as the voice of the NBA's Kings at the tail end of their run in that city. His resume also includes nine years with the Kansas City Chiefs and nine with the Minnesota Timberwolves in addition to work with the universities of Kansas (his alma mater) and Missouri.

Given that background, it seems apropos that Harlan has covered more Chiefs games (58) than any other franchise in his first 399 appearances. His 29 visits to KC are seven more than his second-most-frequent destination, Cleveland; spanning both home and road games, he's handled the Raiders and Oilers/Titans 46 times each.

Harlan also serves as the number-two voice of the NBA on TNT, a network he's worked with since 1997: his 676 NBA broadcasts are probably the sixth-most in history until he catches Doug Collins later this season. Only Marv Albert and Mike Breen have done more network NBA play-by-play.

Since 2010, Harlan has handled the radio broadcast of Monday Night Football on Westwood One, usually working alongside Boomer Esiason. Last season, that capacity enabled him to deliver the blow-by-blow account of a field intruder in a Rams-49ers game. It's also put him on the radio call of the last seven Super Bowls.

Harlan is the first play-by-play announcer to reach 400 NFL broadcasts without working a playoff game; Ian Eagle, whose divisional-round assignment for CBS two years ago was his 302nd NFL game, is the only other announcer to get as far as 300 reps without appearing in the postseason. With Eagle off that list, the runner-up in that category is now Sam Rosen with 270 games.

If you can name the other six play-by-play men to work 400 games, you win nothing: the list is available anytime on our TV databases page. But for the sake of completeness, here are the six previous quadricentennials:

• Charlie Jones: Sept. 22, 1991 -- Browns-Giants for NBC with Todd Christensen
• Don Criqui: Sept. 15, 1996 -- Chiefs-Seahawks for NBC with Beasley Reece
• Pat Summerall: Dec. 29, 1996 -- Eagles-49ers (wild-card game) for Fox with John Madden
• Dick Stockton: Oct. 3, 2004 -- Eagles-Bears for Fox with Daryl Johnston and Tony Siragusa
• Dick Enberg: Oct. 31, 2004 -- Ravens-Eagles for CBS with Dan Dierdorf and sideline reporter Armen Keteyian
• Al Michaels: Sept. 17, 2006 -- Washington-Dallas for NBC with John Madden and sideline reporter Andrea Kremer.

Additionally, four color commentators (Madden, Dierdorf, Phil Simms and Paul Maguire) have gotten to 400 games and Pam Oliver reached that plateau on the sidelines on October 29. Finally, Frank Gifford got to 400 games with a decade to spare, but did so by splitting time between color and play-by-play.

We'll likely get to do this again next November for Kenny Albert: everyone else is at least two years away from 400, although Dan Fouts should get to 300 early in 2018.

---

Some other milestones of note so far in the 2017 NFL season, listed chronologically...

• In the season opener, Cris Collinsworth notched his 315th color-commentary appearance, sliding past Gifford for sixth on that list.
• Three days later, Greg Gumbel's 334th game on play-by-play matched him with Curt Gowdy for the ninth-most ever; Gumbel would pass Gowdy on Sept. 17. Jim Nantz caught Gowdy with Bengals-Packers on Sept. 24 and passed him with the Bears-Packers Thursday night game the following week.
• Daryl Johnston has risen from 10th to eighth on the color-commentary list, passing Bob Trumpy with Falcons-Lions on Sept. 24 and Joe Theismann with Panthers-Buccaneers on Oct. 29. With six weeks left in the season, Johnston looks to be on pace to catch Gifford as well in 2017.
• Laura Okmin passed Bonnie Bernstein for fifth on the sideline-reporter list with her 142nd game, the Rams-Cowboys tilt at JerryWorld on the opening day of the fiscal fourth quarter. Okmin is slated for her 150th sideline appearance on Sunday as she joins Johnston and Chris Myers in Indianapolis. She's within a year's work of passing Suzy Kolber and Armen Keteyian for third in that category.
• With Nantz pulling double duty by calling Thursday Night Football on some CBS doubleheader weeks, he also caught Gumbel on Oct. 5. The Tiffany network's top two game-callers traded the spot for several weeks before Nantz pulled ahead for good on Oct. 22.
• Gannon worked his 200th game as a color analyst on Oct. 15 in Oakland. While 200 games isn't anything to sneeze at, having been achieved about once a year since the merger, the fact that Gannon is sixth among active analysts highlights the drop-off in experience after Collinsworth, Fouts, Johnston and Troy Aikman. 
• As mentioned above, Oliver worked her 400th sideline on the last Sunday in October. The undisputed queen of NFL sideline reports, Oliver has a lead of almost 10 years' worth of games (depending on how one counts the playoffs) over second-place Michele Tafoya.
• Speaking of the sideline, Tracy Wolfson and Jennifer Hale each reached their 100-game plateau in Week 9. Wolfson got there with Bills-Jets on Thursday, Nov. 2; while Hale matched the total three days later, Wolfson would pull ahead again thanks to the same Thursday-Saturday double duty that helped Nantz above.

Albert/Breen/Harlan/Stockton Sports Theater 3000

Having covered the NHL database already, tonight we'll take a look at updates to the database of every known regular-season and postseason NBA telecast.

(Standard disclaimer: These announcer totals come from the lists maintained at The 506 Forums (free registration required to view); in this post, we're working with data posted by John Moynihan and Tim Brulia. And as always, you can see the top 16 in each category on our TV databases page.)

While I'm not convinced we have every NBA game ever in the list and there are still a sizable number of gaps (some 2.4 percent of the announcer data is uncertain), the data we have is ... what we have. Moreover, while I'm not convinced all of the guesses we have are correct, I do think it's fair to estimate off them -- for example, if a hypothetical network has a dozen doubleheaders over the course of a season, their lead and no. 2 crews probably worked about 12 games each that year.

Because of that uncertainty, however, I maintain two separate NBA lists: one that counts only the confirmed games and one that includes the hypotheses of Moynihan's original notes.

Regardless of your counting method, Monday night's Wizards-Pistons game on TNT is the 7,500th in the NBA database. Among those 7,500 games, 2,457 have come on TNT and another 1,456 on ESPN. NBC, the top-ranked broadcast network, has shown 967 tilts -- and I feel really old when I realize that "Roundball Rock" hasn't been on TV in almost five-eighths of my lifetime.

It probably won't surprise most of you to learn that the three most-televised teams are the Lakers, Celtics and Knicks, nor that Marv Albert checks in as the dean of NBA broadcasters with 995 appearances (994 on play-by-play, plus a color appearance alongside Chris Schenkel on ABC for a Knicks-Rockets game in 1973).

The top three PBP voices of all-time are currently active in the people of Albert, Mike Breen and Kevin Harlan; Dick Stockton, who may not have officially retired but hasn't appeared since 2015, is fourth. As of the end of the regular season tonight, those four announcers have handled a total of exactly 3,000 games.

Albert enters the playoffs five games and six PBP appearances shy of 1,000, a mark that only Bill Clement has reached on a single sport in the United States. Breen needs 21 games to reach 750.

On the analyst side, all-time leader Hubie Brown is two confirmed games shy of 950 and 25 total appearances, including guesses, away from 1000. Doug Collins follows him at 666 and 690 respectively. Jeff Van Gundy, the leader among those analysts whose careers started since the uncertain announcer data ends in 1993, is third overall with 545.

Reggie Miller needs eight more games to reach 400, all on color commentary, and 10 more to tie his sister Cheryl for the 13th-most appearances in league history. Mark Jackson enters the playoffs with 387 broadcasts, five behind Miller.

Following the passing of Craig Sager in December, David Aldridge's 262 confirmed broadcasts make him the longest-tenured sideline reporter in the playoffs, although he trails Doris Burke by 22 games if you include Burke's color work. Since we're missing a lot of sideline reporters from the 2006-07 and 2007-08 seasons, both individuals may well be shorted 40 games or so, but again ... we have what we have.

The regular season concludes tonight, leaving anywhere from 60 to 105 national telecasts in the playoffs that begin Saturday on ESPN, ABC, TNT and NBA TV.