Most sports fans know Scott Hanson as the host of NFL RedZone, where he spends each Sunday perched solo at his desk and absolutely bursting with information to share as a full slate of games unfolds. This summer the TV veteran will bring his familiar élan to Peacock to take viewers around the Paris Olympics.
Sports Illustrated: How big of an Olympics fan are you?
Scott Hanson: Big Olympics fan. I’ve watched every Olympics, Winter and Summer, since I knew what the Olympics was. I’ve never been to the Olympics before, and I’ve never covered it before, so it’ll be new for me in that respect.
SI: Do you have a favorite Olympics memory?
SH: I mean, I remember 1980, the Miracle on Ice. My dad had heard that the Miracle on Ice had happened, but it was not broadcast live in the United States. And so my dad said we have to sit down and watch this. I was 9 years old.
The Miracle on Ice is tough to beat. Michael Phelps’s incredible run. Usain Bolt, any time he got into the starting blocks was absolute riveting television. And then, I mean, some of the other moments that the Olympics have provided us. Eddie the Eagle, right? Someone who was not even remotely close to winning a medal, let alone a gold medal, his story and his personality and his endeavor, just being thrilling to watch and easy to root for. The Olympics brings more people together around the world than almost anything else.
SI: How did your involvement in Gold Zone come together?
SH: NBC Sports approached me with this idea. I’ll admit it, when they came to me, it was daunting. To have to conceptualize bringing 39 sports, multiple disciplines within those sports, 329 medal events, involving more than 10,000 athletes, whose names I’ve never pronounced. To bring all of those things into a Red Zone–style format was daunting. And is daunting. I’m excited to see how we’ll pull this off. …
The NBC Sports executives approached me multiple times about doing this, and we finally got to a place where I’m like, O.K. I think I can do this the way I want to do this, with excellence, and I think I can do this the way NBC Sports wants to do this, with excellence, so the audience has a tremendous experience. But it was a hard sell. You know? Because how much does anyone know about Bahrain handball? Or Turkish water polo?
SI: I found an old tweet of yours—which is sometimes a dangerous way to begin a question—but NBC had a version of Gold Zone for London in 2012 that was online-only and no host. And you tweeted at Jim Bell, an executive at NBC at the time, and said, “If you change your mind on Gold Zone host, my passport is totally up to date. Have a great games! Watching now.” Do you remember sending that tweet?
SH: Oh my goodness. Not until you said that. I do now. You just reminded me of that.
SI: It has zero likes and zero retweets. Only I’ve seen it. We don’t know if Jim Bell ever saw it.
SH: What year was it?
SI: That was 2012. And then 2014 and 2016 they had it, and there was a host, including Andrew Siciliano, so I’m wondering how much you might have watched of Gold Zone for Sochi and Rio?
SH: I didn’t see a lot of Gold Zone. I watched mostly the prime-time stuff and the streaming stuff of individual events that I was interested in.
But Akbar Gbajabiamila—who is one of the other hosts who’ll be doing a chunk of it, he and Matt Iseman, who are the cohosts of American Ninja Warrior—Akbar hit me up and we had a long conversation about hosting RedZone [before Gbajabiamila hosted a show called Tokyo Live in 2021] and how I approach it, and now I’m teaming up with those guys, so I’m gonna be preaching to myself about the approach.
SI: Your studio will be in Stamford, Connecticut?
SH: I’m gonna be in Stamford, yes. Some people have said, Ahh, you’re not going to Paris?? But my life is going to be hotel, studio, studio, hotel, hotel, studio. So it’s fine by me that I’m in Stamford as opposed to Paris. … And, look, I host Red Zone from Los Angeles, and I take people to Green Bay, Atlanta, New England, Miami, Seattle, no problem on NFL Sundays. So taking them around to a couple of dozen venues in Paris from a studio in Stamford will be a seamless viewer experience.
SI: Will it feel like a road game for you, being in a new studio with new people in your ear?
SH: One-hundred percent. In fact, I wanted a scouting trip to Stamford, Connecticut. I’m flying to Stamford for a reconnaissance mission to see the studio, visualize what we’re gonna do and how we’re going to do it. To meet all the researchers, to meet with executives, to shoot some promos, to just get familiar with the environment. But it’ll still be new. When we go live for the first time, we’ll be learning each other as we go through the 17 days.
SI: In your prep, how much are you focused on learning the athletes and the countries, and how much is it like learning all the rules for judo and fencing and the modern pentathlon scoring system?
SH: I have emails with attachments on them that add up to hundreds and hundreds of pages of research. Jon Quartuccio is the head of NBC Sports and Olympics research, and I’ve had more calls with him than I have with any NBC Sports executive to this point. Because I told him I need to saturate my brain with everything I can possibly think of that I might use during the 17 days of competition. And he’s taken that to heart and sent me emails that are heavy in my inbox, let me put it that way.
SI: Do you anticipate that you’ll have your double- and triple-boxes, if there’s, say, a big wrestling match during the steeplechase?
SH: Sure. The NBC Sports folks said part of the reason they wanted to recruit me is because of my institutional knowledge of how we produce RedZone. They want my ideas, as to how we can mix Olympic sports together and make it a fascinating viewing experience. So yeah, I 100% anticipate there’ll be double-boxes, maybe a triple-box or a quad-box. If anyone knows what the Latin or Greek prefix is for 39, that’s that most boxes we could have because they have 39 sports. Not that they’ll be going on simultaneously, but there will be days in the middle of the day, morning Eastern time, but in the middle of the day Paris time, where we’ll have a dozen events going on.
… Another cool thing about Gold Zone on Peacock will be when we cut from event to event, I will let you know that if you want to stay with archery, we’re gonna go over to water polo now, or we’re gonna cut to the soccer game, but if you wanna stay with archery, there is another path on Peacock for you to watch the rest of the archery competition. We’ll go back to it when the gold medal arrow is being shot, but if you want to watch just that, it’s going to be available. Every sport will be available in its entirety between Peacock and NBC. There’s never been anything like it in the history of sports television.
SI: You have your personal brand and some catchphrases that people know you for. Will you bring some of that over? Like will you start the day giving viewers the octo-box? Are you gonna hit people with a “Seven hours of commercial-free Olympics” or any Easter eggs for your RedZone fans?
SH: I promise I will drop some Easter eggs for our loyal NFL RedZone viewers that are watching Gold Zone. One-hundred percent, there will be Easter eggs. Catchphrases have to feel organic. So I would just say tune in and watch. It’ll be worth your time. But yeah, I don’t want to force anything. You want it to be natural.
SI: You sound very busy preparing. What are you usually doing this time of year?
SH: One thing I do every summer is I take an international trip, and I volunteer and then I’ll explore or have an adventure. It’s kind of a half mission trip, half vacation. And I’m having to amend my plans a bit this summer, with the buildup to the Olympics. But it’s a fair tradeoff to have this responsibility and this assignment with NBC Sports. I still am planning on volunteering. I think I’m gonna go, it’s not 100% sure, but I think I’m gonna serve at an orphanage for Down syndrome children in Guatemala. It’s part of a group called Orphan Outreach that I partnered with in Latvia and Russia and Kenya; they’re an American-based organization, and I’ve gone on trips with them before. And I’m really excited about it, but the way my calendar is falling, I might be there in Guatemala like two or three weeks before the Olympics begin. So I’ll still have time to reacclimate and get in Olympics mode. I’ll be in Olympics mode even when I’m in Guatemala. …
I’m very blessed in my life, with time and some disposable income that I can use to hopefully be a blessing to other people. So I love doing it, and I love children, and particularly the most vulnerable children. I’ve done it every summer that I’ve hosted RedZone, except for COVID summer. So I’ve served in probably 15 or 16 different countries.
SI: When you look back on the job you do hosting Gold Zone, either day-by-day or after the Olympics, what will it take for you to feel like you did a good job or it was worth it?
SH: If at the end of the Games, people tell me, That felt like RedZone. Or, That gave me some RedZone–esque thrills, that will be mission accomplished. If casual Olympics fans tell me at the end of the Games that they watched more Olympics than they ever have because of Gold Zone, that will be mission accomplished.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Q&A: 'NFL RedZone' Star Scott Hanson Talks Paris Games, Hosting Olympics 'Gold Zone'.
