Tirico is the lead voice on NBC’s biggest sports events, including Sunday Night Football, the Olympics, the Kentucky Derby, and the U.S. Open and Open Championship golf majors. Prior to his arrival at NBC, Tirico spent 25 years at ESPN/ABC, where he served as a SportsCenter anchor and reporter, as well as play-by-play voice on a number of sports. The Syracuse University graduate began his television sports career at WTVH-TV in Syracuse, N.Y. He was voted the NSMA’s National Sportscaster of the Year in 2010.
Shaughnessy is a sports columnist and associate editor at the Boston Globe, where he has spent 47 years over two stints. The Groton, Mass. native graduated from Holy Cross in 1975, and worked part-time at the Globe from 1973-77, before spending four years each covering the Baltimore Orioles for the Baltimore Evening Sun and the Washington Star. He re-joined the Globe full-time in 1981 and has been a sports columnist since 1989. The author of 13 books, Shaughnessy is a 14-time Massachusetts Sportswriter of the Year and 13 times has been voted one of America's top ten sports columnists by the Associated Press Sports Editors. He was the 2016 recipient of the BBWAA Career Excellence Award for "meritorious contributions to baseball writing," presented at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Jones was best known for the nearly 40 years he spent as a network television football play-by-play announcer, starting in 1960 broadcasting American Football League games on ABC. He moved to NBC in 1965 and called both the AFL and NFL until 1997. He returned to call games on ABC from 1999-2001. The Fort Smith, Ark. native and University of Southern California graduate also earned his law degree from the University of Arkansas. He began his broadcasting career in local television in Arkansas. Jones died in 2008 at the age of 77.
Smith, a Detroit, Mich. native and West Virginia State College graduate began writing for the Pittsburgh Courier, then the largest national black newspaper in the country. A baseball player in his youth, he wrote his first story on baseball’s color barrier after interviewing more than 50 major league players, more than 75 percent of whom said they had no problem with blacks in the majors. Smith was the first to suggest Jackie Robinson’s name to Dodgers’ General Manager Branch Rickey and was hired by Rickey to travel with Robinson during the 1946 and 1947 seasons to provide support and counsel. In 1948, Smith moved to the Chicago Herald-American. He became the first black member of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America that same year. He traded newspapers for television, moving to Chicago’s WGN in 1964. When Robinson died in 1972, Smith wrote his obituary. It would be his last story. He died at the age of 58 one month later.
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