Michele Tafoya

Last updated

Michele Tafoya
WAS at PHI Jan 2021 D50 4773 (50804581278) (cropped).jpg
Tafoya in 2021
Born1964or1965(age 59–60) [1]
Alma mater University of California, Berkeley (BA)
University of Southern California (MA)
Occupations
  • Sportscaster
  • sideline reporter
  • political consultant
Political party Republican
SpouseMark Vandersall
Children2
Awards5x Sports Emmy Award winner
Sports commentary career
Genre(s) Play-by-play
Sideline reporter
Sports
Employer NBC Sports (2011–2022)
ESPN (2000–2011)
CBS Sports (1994–1999)

Michele Tafoya (born 1964/1965) [1] is an American reporter and retired sports broadcaster. Most notably, from 2011 to 2022, she worked primarily as a sideline reporter for NBC Sunday Night Football . Over the course of her career, she covered the National Football League, the Olympics, and professional basketball. Since Tafoya's departure from sportscasting, she has worked as a conservative political consultant and makes television appearances to discuss the state of American politics and culture.

Contents

Early life

Tafoya is the daughter of Wilma (née Conley) and Orlando Tafoya. [1] [2] She is of Hispanic descent. [2] She has one brother and three sisters. [2] She attended Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, California. [3] She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in mass communications from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988, and a master's degree in business administration from the University of Southern California in 1991. [4]

Career

Tafoya worked as a host and reporter for KFAN-AM in Minneapolis, primarily for Minnesota Vikings and University of Minnesota women's basketball broadcasts. She worked for WAQS (now WFNZ) in Charlotte, where she went by the name Mickey Conley. [5] Conley is her mother's maiden name. [1]

Tafoya also worked for the Midwest Sports Channel, serving as a Minnesota Timberwolves host and sideline reporter, as well as a play-by-play commentator for women's Big Ten basketball and volleyball.[ citation needed ] Tafoya then spent three years at WCCO-TV in Minneapolis as a sports anchor and reporter.[ citation needed ]

CBS Sports

Tafoya joined CBS Sports in September 1994 as a reporter and host for the CBS Television Network's sports anthology show CBS Sports Spectacular and college basketball coverage. She served as a host of At The Half and as a reporter for college football games. She made her on-air debut at the 1994 U.S. Open Tennis Championships. [6]

In 1997, The American Women in Radio and Television honored Tafoya with a Gracie Award for "Outstanding Achievement by an Individual On-Air TV Personality" for her play-by-play calling of WNBA games on Lifetime Television. [6] Tafoya served as a reporter for the network's coverage of the NFL, college football—including the 1998 National Championship Orange Bowl—and was late-night co-host with Al Trautwig of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano.[ citation needed ] In addition to her diverse assignments, Tafoya hosted CBS's NCAA Tournament selection show, Goodwill Games and the U.S Open Tennis Championships coverage. She left CBS at the end of 1999, after five years with the network.[ citation needed ]

ABC Sports and ESPN

Tafoya joined ESPN and ABC Sports in January 2000, working as a sideline reporter for ABC Sports' Monday Night Football during the 2004 NFL season and the 2005 NFL season before the program shifted to ESPN; she worked the sideline for ESPN Monday Night Football beginning in 2006. Tafoya was a co-host for the Mike Tirico Show on ESPN radio. She helped ABC in its coverage of Super Bowl XL in Detroit as a sideline reporter with Suzy Kolber.[ citation needed ]

She was loaned to NBC Sports for the 2000 Sydney Olympics as a Reporter for Rhythmic Gymnastics and as the play-by-play woman for softball.

On October 10, 2003, Tafoya poured beer over two fans beneath her luxury box at the Metrodome during a University of Minnesota versus University of Michigan game. Tafoya admitted to losing her composure and said she was embarrassed over the incident. She also issued a public apology. [7] [8]

Tafoya formerly worked at NBA games on ABC and ESPN. On October 21, 2008, she announced she would be resigning from her duties as head NBA sideline reporter. [9]

Tafoya's other previous roles included a stint as the men's and women's NCAA basketball play-by-play and studio host and as a college football and basketball sideline reporter. She also has served as a substitute host on Pardon the Interruption and as a panelist on The Sports Reporters II. Her other ESPN assignments have included calling WNBA games as well as hosting skiing telecasts and working on ESPN's college basketball selection shows as a reporter. She also was a correspondent for SportsCenter and Outside the Lines .

In 2006, the Davie-Brown Index ranked Tafoya among the most likable TV sports personalities, including Biggest Trend-Setter.[ citation needed ] At the end of the 2010-2011 NFL season, she left ESPN for NBC Sports.[ citation needed ]

Return to WCCO

Tafoya was announced as the new evening drive time talk radio host for WCCO-AM on April 19, 2009. [10] Her show began on June 1, 2009, where she teamed with afternoon host and lead-in Don Shelby on the schedule from 3-3:30 p.m., with Tafoya taking over from 3:30-6 p.m. [10] Her hosting ended on Friday, January 27, 2012. [11] She made the decision ahead of her schedule becoming busier with the Super Bowl and London Olympics. [11]

KQRS Radio

Tafoya joined "The KQ Morning Show" on KQRS-FM as co-host with long-time KQ morning personality Tom Barnard on September 8, 2016. [12] She left the KQRS morning show in March 2020. [12] The team dynamics were well received. [13]

NBC Sports

Michele Tafoya as sideline reporter for NBC Sports in January 2021 WAS at PHI Jan 2021 D50 4769 (50804581393).jpg
Michele Tafoya as sideline reporter for NBC Sports in January 2021

On May 4, 2011, Tafoya was announced as the new sideline reporter for NBC Sunday Night Football , replacing Andrea Kremer and rejoining former co-worker and announcer Al Michaels. [14] Tafoya has also covered swimming during the Summer Olympics for NBC.

Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reported that Tafoya would leave Sunday Night Football following the 2021 season. [15] On January 11, 2022, NBC confirmed in a press release that Tafoya would depart the network, with Super Bowl LVI as her final assignment, to pursue other opportunities. [16]

Politics

On February 14, 2022, a day after her departure from NBC Sports, Republican Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Kendall Qualls announced Tafoya would be joining his campaign as co-chair. [17] Qualls later withdrew from the race.

Personal life

Tafoya had three pregnancies of four children end in miscarriage before carrying her son to term. [18] She and her husband, Mark Vandersall, have a biological son and daughter by adoption. [18] [9] The family lives in Edina, Minnesota. [9] In 2007, she told WCCO-TV that she had been struggling with an eating disorder since she was a child. [19]

Tafoya describes herself as a "pro-choice conservative with libertarian leanings". [20]

Career timeline

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannah Storm</span> American sportscaster (born 1962)

Hannah Lynn Storen Hicks, known professionally as Hannah Storm, is an American television sports journalist, serving as the anchor of ESPN's SportsCenter. She was also host of the NBA Countdown pregame show on ABC as part of the network's National Basketball Association (NBA) Sunday game coverage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bonnie Bernstein</span> American sports journalist and executive

Bonnie Lynn Bernstein is an American sports journalist and media executive. She has been named one of the most accomplished female sportscasters in history by the American Sportscasters Association, spending nearly 20 years as a reporter and studio host at ESPN, ABC and CBS Sports, covering the NFL, NBA, MLB and college football and basketball. Bernstein is currently the founder and CEO of Walk Swiftly Productions, a multimedia production company specializing in non-scripted sports and entertainment content.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzy Kolber</span> American football sideline reporter, co-producer, and sportscaster

Suzy Kolber is an American football sideline reporter, co-producer, and a former ESPN sports anchor and reporter. She was one of the original anchors of ESPN2 when it launched in 1993. Three years later, she left ESPN2 to join Fox Sports, but returned to ESPN in late 1999. In 2023, she and several other ESPN employees were terminated by the network in what was described as a cost-cutting measure.

CBS Sports is the sports division of the American television broadcaster CBS. Its headquarters are in the CBS Building on W 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, with programs produced out of Studios 43 and 44 of the CBS Broadcast Center on W 57th Street.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KFXN-FM</span> Sports radio station in the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area

KFXN-FM is a commercial radio station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, broadcasting a sports talk format. The station is owned by iHeartMedia, and serves the Twin Cities market. KFXN-FM's transmitter is located in the suburb of Shoreview on KMSP-TV's tower. Its effective radiated power is 100,000 watts. The station's main studios are in St. Louis Park.

Nationally television broadcasts of National Basketball Association (NBA) games first aired on ABC from 1965 to 1973. In 2002, NBA games returned to ABC as part of a contract signed with the league, along with cable sister network ESPN. After the ABC Sports division was merged into ESPN Inc. by parent company Disney in 2006, broadcasts have since been produced by ESPN, and have primarily used the NBA on ESPN branding and graphics instead of the NBA on ABC branding.

Lesley Candace Visser is an American sportscaster, television and radio personality, and sportswriter. Visser is the first female NFL analyst on TV, and the only sportscaster in history who has worked on Final Four, NBA Finals, World Series, Triple Crown, Monday Night Football, the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the World Figure Skating Championships and the U.S. Open network broadcasts. Visser, who was voted the No. 1 Female Sportscaster of all time in a poll taken by the American Sportscasters Association, was inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association's Hall of Fame in 2015 and the International Sports Hall of Fame in 2020.

Melissa Zoey Stark is an American television personality and sportscaster, best known as the current sideline reporter for NBC Sunday Night Football and the former sideline reporter for Monday Night Football.

<i>NBC Sunday Night Football</i> American television series

NBC Sunday Night Football is an American weekly television broadcast of National Football League (NFL) games on NBC and Peacock in the United States. It began airing on August 6, 2006, with the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, which opened that year's preseason. NBC took over the rights to the Sunday prime time game telecasts from ESPN, which carried the broadcasts from 1987 to 2005. At the same time, ESPN began broadcasting Monday Night Football when it was dropped from sister network ABC. Previously, NBC had aired American Football League (AFL), and later American Football Conference (AFC), games from 1965 until 1997, when CBS took over those rights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tracy Wolfson</span> American sportscaster (born 1975)

Tracy Wolfson is an American sportscaster for CBS Sports. She is the lead sideline reporter for the NFL on CBS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrea Kremer</span> American sports journalist

Andrea Kremer is a multi-Emmy Award-winning American television sports journalist. In December 2024, Andrea was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2024. This tremendous honor accompanies another impressive recognition earlier this year as Kremer was the lone female inductee in the 2024 class of the National Sports Media Association Hall of Fame. She previously called Thursday Night Football games for Amazon Prime Video making sports history, along with Hannah Storm, by becoming the first all-women booth to call any major men's team sport, not just football. Kremer is currently the Chief Correspondent for the NFL Network and previously led the network's coverage and in-depth reporting on health and safety. Kremer added a podcast to her broadcast portfolio in 2021 as the host of iHeart’s “NFL Films: Tales From the Vault.” This weekly podcast dove deep into NFL history featuring exclusive interviews between the late NFL Films founder Steve Sabol and some of the most iconic figures in the game.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heather Cox</span> American sports commentator

Heather Cox is an American sportscaster who is a sports reporter for NBC. As Heather Schoeny, she played college volleyball at University of the Pacific.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Flanagan</span> American sportscaster (born 1973)

Alex Flanagan is the Vice president of Broadcasting for the Montag group, a Wasserman company and a former American sportscaster. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona. She began her career as a news reporter and anchor and began covering sports in 1998. She has worked for networks including, NBC Sports, NFL Network, ESPN, and Fox Sports.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maria Taylor (sportscaster)</span> American sportscaster

Suzette Maria Taylor is an American sportscaster for NBC Sports. She has worked for ESPN and the SEC Network. She has covered college football, college volleyball, National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), and men's and women's college basketball.

On March 12, 1990, at the NFL's annual meeting in Orlando, Florida, the league new ratified four-year television agreements for the 1990 to 1993 seasons involving ABC, CBS, NBC, ESPN and TNT. The contracts totaled US$3.6 billion, the largest package in television history. This contract saw each network having rights to one Super Bowl telecast as part of the package. The fourth Super Bowl (XXVIII) was up for a separate sealed bid. NBC won the bid, and since they were last in the rotation for Super Bowl coverage in the regular contract, ended up with two straight Super Bowls. CBS is the only other network to televise two Super Bowls in a row. NBC, which had held XXVII, was the only network to bid on XXVIII. Previously, the league alternated the Super Bowl broadcast among its broadcast network partners, except for Super Bowl I; CBS broadcast Super Bowl II, then the league rotated the broadcast between CBS and NBC until 1985 when ABC entered the rotation when that network broadcast Super Bowl XIX.

Recently, the NFL's TV broadcasters have suffered annual financial losses because advertising revenue is unable to keep up with the rising costs of broadcast rights.

From 2014 to 2022, CBS, NBC, and Fox, as well as cable television's ESPN, paid a combined total of US$20.4 billion will pay $39.6 billion for exactly the same broadcast rights. The NFL thus holds broadcast contracts with four companies that control a combined vast majority of the country's television product. League-owned NFL Network, on cable television, also broadcasts a selected number of games nationally. In 2017, the NFL games attracted the top three rates for a 30-second advertisement: $699,602 for NBC Sunday Night Football, $550,709 for Thursday Night Football (NBC), and $549,791 for Thursday Night Football (CBS).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on American sports broadcasting</span>

When the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, all major professional and collegiate organizations responded by suspending operations indefinitely. This effect was passed down to the world of sports broadcasting, which includes live coverage of thousands of events on an annual basis through stations and network available over the air, through cable, satellite, and IPTV companies, and via streaming and over-the-top services.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Nelson, Kate (January 12, 2018). "An Uncensored Interview with Michele Tafoya". Artful Living. The 53-year-old California native has called the Twin Cities home for nearly a quarter of a century, ever since a job at KFAN sports radio brought her to the frozen tundra...."Conley" happened because they didn't think Tafoya was going to work well; they thought it was too ethnic. So I used my mom's maiden name.
  2. 1 2 3 Jacobs, Melissa (January 31, 2018). "Super Bowl 52 Q&A: NBC's Michele Tafoya". thefootballgirl.com. 'I'm a Hispanic and I'm a female and look at how great this is for me.' I say, "'I'm Michele Tafoya. My mom is Wilma, My dad was Orlando. I have a brother and three sisters.
  3. ↑ "Hall Of Fame". Mira Costa High School Alumni. October 11, 2019. Retrieved January 22, 2020.
  4. ↑ "Michele Tafoya". NBC Sports. Retrieved February 13, 2014.
  5. ↑ Washburn, Mark (May 4, 2004). "Tafoya lands 'MNF' sideline role". Charlotte Observer. p. 2C. Retrieved February 13, 2014.
  6. 1 2 Doody, Ben (September 4, 2014). "Michele Tafoya: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know". Heavy . Retrieved February 12, 2017. ...worked as a WNBA commentator on Lifetime from 1997-99
  7. ↑ Hoffman, Bill (October 17, 2003). "REPORTER'S PRETTY POUR SHOWING". The New York Post. Retrieved February 12, 2017. I am so regretful, I can't even tell you.
  8. ↑ Weyler, John (November 3, 2003). "She Quickly Brought Matters to a Head". Los Angeles Times.
  9. 1 2 3 Zulgad, Judd (October 21, 2008). "Tafoya gives up NBA duties". Timberwolves. Star Tribune. Archived from the original on October 24, 2008. Retrieved October 21, 2008.
  10. 1 2 Gustafson, Amy Carlson - Michele Tafoya gets WCCO-AM drive-time slot. TwinCities.com Pioneer Press, April 19, 2009
  11. 1 2 Michele Tafoya Ending Show On WCCO Radio. CBS News, January 24, 2012
  12. 1 2 Venta, Lance - Michelle Tafoya Exits KQRS Morning Show. Radio Insight, March 9, 2020
  13. ↑ Tafoya & Barnard Proving To Be Electric Pairing For KQRS. CBS News, November 21, 2016
  14. ↑ "Michele Tafoya Joins "Sunday Night Football" As Sideline Reporter". TV By the Numbers. May 4, 2011. Archived from the original on February 13, 2017. Retrieved February 12, 2017.
  15. ↑ Marchand, Andrew (December 14, 2021). "Michele Tafoya done with sideline reporting after this NFL season". New York Post. Retrieved December 15, 2021.
  16. ↑ Young, Ryan (January 11, 2022). "Michele Tafoya leaving NBC's 'Sunday Night Football' after Super Bowl LVI". Yahoo! Sports. Retrieved January 12, 2022.
  17. ↑ Justin, Neal (February 14, 2022). "Michele Tafoya signs off from final Super Bowl with little fanfare, jumps into politics". Star Tribune. Retrieved February 15, 2022.
  18. 1 2 "After Four Miscarriages, Michele Tafoya got Pregnant at the age of 40: Mother's Sacrifice for Her Baby: Married life, Husband". LIVERAMPUP. April 30, 2019. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
  19. ↑ "Michele Tafoya's Struggle with Eating Disorders". News. WCCO-TV. November 16, 2007. Archived from the original on December 3, 2008. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
  20. ↑ "Michele Tafoya on Working 200th NFL Game". SI.com. Time Inc. December 7, 2015. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
  21. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "ESPN Press Room". ESPN Press Room U.S. Archived from the original on July 5, 2008. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.