Notre Dame on NBC gets new voice at the mike

Michael Hiestand, USA TODAY Sports | USATODAY

NBC will formally announce today that Notre Dame home football games will get a new voice for the 2013 season: Dan Hicks, replacing Tom Hammond on play-by-play.

Hicks, who will work with returning analyst Mike Mayock, will continue as the network's lead announcer on golf and Olympic swimming. Hammond will continue his NBC assignments on horse racing, figure skating, track and field and gymnastics.

In 1992, Hicks joined NBC from studio work at CNN, where met his wife, Hannah Storm, who is now an ESPN anchor. At NBC, he worked 50-60 NFL games in what was then NBC's AFC TV package of Sunday afternoon games – "it was my baptism by fire on play-by-play," he told USA TODAY Sports on Sunday – subbed for Hammond on a handful of Notre Dame games in recent years.

Hicks said he showed interest in the assignment by telling NBC executives how much he missed football.

NBC had no comment on why it replaced Hammond. But while it's impossible to look up statistics on this, Hammond last season occasionally had difficulties correctly identifying players.

There's always a question of whether NBC can be objective about covering Notre Dame, given the network for decades has given the school its own national TV package.

Hicks, who went to Arizona while his wife is a Notre Dame alumnus, says objectivity won't be a problem for him: "I'm not going to treat it any differently than any sport or game that I've done."