Post-rush hour, the drive from the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills to the Los Angeles Rams’ practice facility in Thousand Oaks, Calif. is a manageable 50 minutes. On Friday, Nov. 15, most of the core broadcast team for NBC’s “” — analyst Cris Collinsworth, sideline reporter Michele Tafoya, executive producer Fred Gaudelli, director Drew Esocoff and researcher Andy Freeland — make that trip together in a luxury van, departing the hotel shortly after 11 a.m.
For Gaudelli, Collinsworth, Tafoya and play-by-play announcer Al Michaels, the week begins Monday with research and prep. The pattern of watching films, gathering intel, and attending meetings leads, by design, to an overabundance of information. The Rams training facility in Thousand Oaks is ephemeral — a collection of trailers on a piece of land owned by California Lutheran College. When the team returned to Southern California in 2016, it settled on this spot for its practice home in large part for convenience sake. It was already zoned for playing field.
But whereas Collinsworth takes a detail-oriented approach to prep, Michaels — who spent two decades calling ABC’s “Monday Night Football” before making the leap to NBC with Gaudelli and then-analyst John Madden in 2006 — prefers a zoom-out approach. That contrast itself in how they approach meetings with players and coaches.
SNFonNBC Yo, SNFonNBC...can y'all tweet your bumpers like you used to? Those were fun...
55 pages of notes? Excessive.