The Year In Sports Media

stunted, soul-dead bumpkin

putz

King S---

b---

this too blithe young gent

nobody's fool but his own

31 Behind The Mike

Mike Mayock has a broadcasting history to match his NFL background when it comes to sex appeal. Pittsburgh's 10th-round selection in 1981, from Boston College, he was waived by the Steelers before short stints at safety with the Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts and, later, the New York Giants. Afterward he broadcast Arena League and CFL games before doing a tour as a college basketball sideline reporter on CBS. But he got a break in 2005, when the upstart NFL Network hired him, and all he has done since then is separate himself as television's most authoritative draft analyst, being praised by media critics and fans for his attention to detail and for his tireless film work. In a sense, Mike Mayock got his sexy back.

Assigned last May as the analyst on the NFL Network's Thursday Night Football package, Mayock's ascension to the top of his profession is the triumph of the grinder. Says Mark Quenzel, the NFL Network's senior vice president of programming and production, "Mike is a no-nonsense, call-it-as-he-sees-it guy, straightforward and unvarnished and a breath of fresh air."

Mayock talks a lot, but unlike some others, he fires from a prepared place. Early in November, when calling the NFL Network's opening broadcast, between Oakland and San Diego, Mayock told his audience that he had been at a Raiders practice six days earlier and had witnessed quarterback Carson Palmer working with his receivers on how to get off bumps from cornerbacks at the line of scrimmage. Mayock pointed out that this was usually the work of a coach or position assistant. It was the kind of subtle detail that viewers have come to appreciate from him.