Things are a bit different these days at the NBC Sports studio in Stamford, Connecticut, especially for the folks who normally work on the Golf Channel.
Take Shane Bacon for example. The Golf Today co-host is used to seeing some big names around the building, but he wasn’t ready to see Tara Lipinski standing behind him in line at the cafeteria.
“You just kind of walk around the building and you see Lindsey Vonn, you see Tara Lipinski, Steve Kornacki was walking by me yesterday. It just feels enormous,” said Bacon, who, like a handful of his colleagues, has been featured on NBC’s primetime coverage of the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Covering his 19th Olympics, Jimmy Roberts is hosting coverage on USA Network. Dan Hicks, in his 13th Olympics, is doing play-by-play for Alpine Skiing. Terry Gannon is calling Figure Skating. Covering the games on-site in China are Tom Abbott (Biathlon/cross-country) and Todd Lewis (Alpine Skiing). Both are reporting on their first Winter Games.
“You’re calling something that is completely different in terms of the spectrum of golf,” said Bacon, who covered the Olympic golf competition in Tokyo last year and has been spending his time calling the action on the slopes this week.
“This is like a collective group watching the other athletes pull off stuff at times they’ve never even tried before. That’s what’s been the most eye opening, the finish line is always moving in these sports. It’s never a constant. It’s always changing. It’s always evolving,” explained Bacon. “We see it in scoring a little bit in golf, Furyk shoots 58, I think we’re getting closer and closer to that world where somebody might shoot 57, or we see a 59 and a 60 in the same tournament. But golf in terms of the numbers is pretty set, and to see a sport that’s continually changing, you’re continually pushing the envelope and the bars raise every single competition. This isn’t year-to-year, you’re talking month-to-month. X-Games into the Olympics into the World Cup. It’s such an interesting thing to observe.”
The word Bacon kept coming back to when describing his experience: refreshing.
“The Olympics really bring it back to sport,” added Bacon, noting how much of the conversation in golf the last 12 months has circled around money and not the competition. “We never talk about third place in golf, yet third place is an accomplishment. You have to play really, really well that week to finish third. And I love the fact that third and second is celebrated in the Olympics. I love the fact that if you’re a top three athlete in your discipline, in your sport, we are going to celebrate what you do.”
But don’t get it twisted. Once he’s off the air, Bacon doesn’t have a flight out to Aspen. Instead he’ll be off to Bandon Dunes. You can take the guy out of golf for a bit, but you can’t take the golf out of the guy.
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