The 2022 Super Bowl viewers guide: NBC TV info, streaming, radio, prop bets and more

Former Newsday paper boy Al Michaels moved from Long Island to Los Angeles as a teenager and long has called Southern California home.

That fact brings added meaning for him as he prepares to tie Pat Summerall’s record by handling TV play-by-play for his 11th Super Bowl. This year’s game is at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.

But that is not the only subplot around Michaels’ call. He has been coy about his professional future but widely is expected to hand NBC’s lead NFL play-by-play role to Mike Tirico and/or join Amazon’s new Thursday night team next season.

Knowing his contract was up after the Super Bowl, Michaels said he decided before the season began not to let his future distract him from enjoying the journey.

"The minute you start thinking about other things, it takes you away from this," he said.

Michaels, 77, made it clear he will continue working in some capacity, saying, "I do know one thing: I love what I do, feel great and I’m not ready for a rocking chair or golf. I get to play enough golf."

Michaels will be joined by "Sunday Night Football" analyst Cris Collinsworth and sideline reporters Michele Tafoya (in her final NFL game) and Kathryn Tappen, with officiating analysis by Terry McAulay.

Michaels broadcast Cincinnati Reds games in the early 1970s and worked the 1972 Athletics-Reds World Series on NBC, a 50-year gap from then to now that he called "crazy."

Collinsworth, who lives in the Cincinnati area, is one of six players who appeared in both the Bengals’ previous Super Bowls in the 1980s.

"I’m obviously excited," he said. "I’m human. I can’t help myself. It’s going to be fun.

"I would have bought a ticket regardless to go watch this game. I just happen to get the best seat in the house to sit next to my partners. What could be better?"

Tirico, who also is hosting the Winter Olympics, will helm five hours of pregame programming starting at 1 p.m. and will emcee the Lombardi Trophy presentation.

Super Bowl LVI by the NBC numbers

2: SkyCams NBC will use to cover the game

50: Miles of camera and microphone cable

76: Cameras used for Super Bowl in-game coverage

122: Total cameras used for pre-game and in-game coverage

130: Microphones

264,000: Feet of camera and microphone cable

$7 million: Record cost of a 30-second ad

Maria Taylor will share hosting duties, part of a team of on-air personnel that also includes Drew Brees, Tony Dungy, Rodney Harrison, Chris Simms, Peter King, Michael Smith, Steve Kornacki and Dale Earnhardt Jr.

NBC said it will deploy a record 27 hosts, analysts and commentators in eight locations for its 20th Super Bowl broadcast and the first on its streaming outlet, Peacock.

Westwood One will carry the game on radio for the 35th season in a row, with Kevin Harlan on play-by-play, Kurt Warner as his analyst, Gene Steratore as rules analyst and Laura Okmin and Mike Golic as sideline reporters.

Golden twist to Super tradition

"Super Bowl Sunday" always means many hours of programming tonnage on the covering network. But this is something new: NBC has branded it "Super Gold Sunday."

Before and after football, NBC will carry events from the Olympics in Beijing. That includes live gold medal finals in ice dance figure skating and monobob (a single-person bobsled) after the postgame coverage.

NBC analyst Bree Schaaf told Newsday, "The timing for the women’s monobob is perfect; viewers will transition from the premier sporting event for male strength and speed in the Super Bowl to a women's sport that prioritizes pure strength and speed.

"Unlike the other sliding sports, monobob uses a standard sled across the field, one that weighs nearly the same as a two-woman sled with a minimum weight of 360 pounds. With the sleds being the same, we will truly see who the strongest, fastest, most skilled driver in women's bobsled is."

It all begins at 8 a.m. Eastern from Beijing, then shifts to football at noon with the annual showing of NFL Films’ "Road to the Super Bowl."

The official pregame show starts at 1 p.m., leading into the kickoff at 6:30 p.m. The Olympics coverage will start around 10:45 p.m., followed by local news at midnight, then a return to the Olympics.

Super Bowl prop bets

Betting on Super Bowls is as old as the Super Bowl itself. But never has betting on it been as easy (and legal) as it is this year, with New York’s recent greenlighting of mobile wagering.

It was the latest and biggest development so far in a process that began in 2018, when the Supreme Court opened the door for states to allow sports gambling.

So Super Bowl LVI is sure to be the biggest legal sports betting event in American history.

While U.S.-based books have come up with plenty of creative prop bets for the occasion, some of the funkiest remain the domain of off-shore sites.

BetOnline’s annual compilation began with a twist: The over/under for Mickey Guyton’s rendition of the national anthem is 95 seconds, the fastest on record. Usually anthem over / unders come in at a bit under two minutes.

Regarding the color of Ms. Guyton’s outfit, white is the favorite at 5/2. Orange is a 14/1 longshot.

But orange is a 2/1 favorite as the color of liquid poured on the winning coach’s head. Purple is a 10/1 longshot.

Will a player do the Bengals’ classic "Ickey Shuffle" during the game? "Yes" is a slight favorite at 5/7 odds. "No" is even money at 1/1.

Hip-hop halftime show

After featuring The Weeknd last year, the NFL and Pepsi will quintuple-team the halftime show this time, featuring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Lamar are from the Los Angeles area.

"The opportunity to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show, and to do it in my own backyard, will be one of the biggest thrills of my career," Dr. Dre said in a news release.

Before the game, Guyton will sing the national anthem, Jhene Aiko "America the Beautiful" and Mary Mary "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

The Gaudelli-Esocoff connection

NBC producer Fred Gaudelli and director Drew Esocoff will work their seventh Super Bowl together since 2003, when they were with ABC.

"To have your best friend sitting next to you in one of the great moments in sports and having been able to do it seven times is like seven blessings," Gaudelli said.

"It’s a lot like how [Bill] Belichick must have felt about [Tom] Brady and Brady must have felt about Belichick, knowing that, hey, everything is going to be covered. No one is going to be rattled. We know how to do this."

Gaudelli said the 6 p.m. pregame open will feature Halle Berry and include clips of famous football movies as an homage to Hollywood as the big game returns to the Los Angeles area for the first time in 29 years.

The Super Bowl will be sandwiched by NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympic in Beijing.

"If you’re an NBC employee, it’s one of the great days in the history of sports," Gaudelli said.

Michele Tafoya's final football game

While Al Michaels’ NFL announcing future is undetermined, his longtime sideline reporter, Michele Tafoya, already has announced plans to move on to other professional pursuits.

"I’ve worked a lot with this crew, and they are a family of mine," she said. "That's the hard part for me, knowing that the family is going to get a little shakeup here."

As she spoke about departing and colleagues praised her, Tafoya grew emotional during a conference call with reporters. "I’m so glad this is not a Zoom where people can see me right now," she said.

Tafoya said, "You get to a certain point and you've chased what you wanted to chase in a particular arena in your life, and there are other things you want to chase.

"That’s how I feel, and I feel strongly about that. But it’s going to be hard walking out there, leaving these folks."

How NBC will handle the Brian Flores lawsuit

NBC plans to address and discuss Brian Flores’ lawsuit against the NFL during its pregame show on Sunday, but game producer Fred Gaudelli said it likely would not come up during the game itself unless there is a blowout.

"[The pregame] is the primary place it’s going to happen," he said, "and probably the only place it’s going to happen on Super Bowl Sunday."

NBC analyst Tony Dungy, the first Black coach to win a Super Bowl, said of the lack of diversity in the current NFL coaching ranks, "You can put in a lot of policies. You can put in a lot of things to help. But at the end of the day, those 32 owners make the decisions on who they want to hire.

"There's only 32 jobs. So it's a pretty closed shop, and to get progress, that’s what it's going to take, those men and women stepping up and saying, ‘We're going to look in every direction.’

"Fifteen years ago, Lovie Smith and I coached in the Super Bowl against each other. There were some really, really good minority candidates on both of our staffs [with the Colts and Bears], and we thought the NFL was headed in the right direction in minority hiring. Mike Tomlin had just gotten hired by the Steelers.

"It was an exciting time. We've had some progress, but in the last three to four years that progress has dissipated. So we’ve got to do some things to prick the conscience of the owners."

How the Super Bowl simulation played out

People are busy. Not everyone has the time or patience to spend 3 ½ hours watching the Super Bowl.

Good news for those folks from the folks at Glen Head-based Strat-O-Matic: They simulated the game for you and provided advance notice of the final score.

In Strat-O-Matic’s version, the Rams defeated the Bengals, 27-20, winning on a 5-yard run by Cam Akers with 8:26 left.

Matthew Stafford was 26-for-31 for 281 yards and two touchdowns – one to former Giant Odell Beckham Jr. Akers’ score capped an 11-play, 94-yard drive for Los Angeles.

The Bengals’ final possession ended with 22 seconds remaining on a fourth-down sack of Joe Burrow by Aaron Donald at the Cincinnati 15.

Burrow finished 20-for-45 for 197 yards and a touchdown, and Joe Mixon rushed 16 times for 106 yards.

Thanks, Dad

NBC analyst Chris Simms played in the NFL and certainly knows the game well, but he believes he would not be where he is today if not for a certain game played in Pasadena, California, 35 years ago.

That was the next-to-last time before Sunday that the Super Bowl was played in the Los Angeles area, and it was the day his father, Phil, went 22-for-25 for 268 yards and three touchdowns in the Giants’ 39-20 rout of the Broncos.

Chris recalled that as the moment Phil finally proved to skeptics he was worthy of being the seventh overall pick in the 1979 draft.

"I just think all of that, it put the Simms family on the map, and of course, it made him more of a household name," Simms said. "It of course was increasing my love of football. At the time, 6 ½ years old, it was just another boost in the direction of, wow, I want to be a part of this, I want to play football. I want to be a part of the NFL.

"I think that was a moment that was a jump-off spot for me, my family, everything that just got me on this career trajectory . . . Because of my name, the fact that I was a player, my lineage from my dad, all of that, I guess that's where I look at it. I'm fortunate to be here because of NBC, and I think what my dad did is a big part of it."

Chris said he was the kind of kid who at age 4 knew every name and uniform number in the NFL.

"I was obsessed," he said. "Even though I was 6 ½, I was very well aware of the magnitude of the moment. I signed my first autograph walking into the game that day. Took me about four minutes to write my name ‘Christopher’ in block letters there on a Super Bowl game day.

"I was there and totally aware at the moment, too, of just how that was a life-changing thing. I could remember my mom and dad always discussing the Super Bowl even before they were in the game itself and just how important it was to quarterbacks’ careers.

"So it was a great moment. It was some nail-biting in the first half at 10-9 [for the Broncos], but then the second half they blew it open and Dad got to go to Disney World, which is a cool thing, too."

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.