And the chrome-domed 47-year-old has been a sports commentating dynamo from Jump Street. In 1987, he was the first ever recipient of the Bob Costas Scholarship, granted to an outstanding broadcast journalism student, and served as a play-by-play announcer for Syracuse basketball, football, lacrosse, and volleyball games while attending the university. As a junior in college, he was hired by the local CBS affiliate WTVH-TV, and in 1991, ESPN’s
SportsCenter scooped him up right after he collected his diploma.
Then things got sketchy. Though the diminutive, oft-smiling, and bespectacled Tirico strikes viewers as a paragon of congeniality, during his early days at ESPN he was reportedly anything but. During the early-to-mid ‘90s, ESPN was a notorious boys club, with “no fewer than fifty cases of sexual harassment reported by women on the staff to ESPN management through the first half of the 1990s,”
according to Those Guys Have All the Fun, James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales’s oral history of ESPN. “One of the most notorious cases to arise,” they wrote, “was that of Mike Tirico, who became very unpopular with some of the women on staff.” The “notorious” case is explored in greater detail in Michael Freeman’s tome
ESPN: The Uncensored History. According to the book, at a house party in the fall of 1992, a little over a year after he’d been hired by the network, Tirico—then considered a rising star—approached a young female production assistant.
Without introduction, he reportedly told her, “You’re the most beautiful woman in here.” The woman ignored him and walked away, but for the next several minutes, Tirico trailed her around the party—until she finally snapped. “Why don’t you fukk off?” she said, according to the book. “Get away from me.” Tirico stood there dumbfounded, and the woman turned and left the soiree.
As she pulled her car out of the driveway, Tirico allegedly materialized in front of the woman’s car and signaled her to stop. He walked to the driver’s side door, and the woman reluctantly rolled it down, saying, “Get out of the way… I don’t want to hit you with my car.” As the woman began rolling up the window, he reportedly “reached into the car and attempted to put one of his hands between her thighs.” She screamed, and Tirico headed back to the party. The incident was, according to the book, corroborated by a current ESPN producer, as well as “other current and former ESPN officials.”
It wasn’t the only disturbing episode, according to Freeman’s book. Another woman, who produced the afternoon SportsCenter that featured Tirico, and who became friends with him and his fiancée (and future wife) Debbie, claimed she began receiving a series of emails from the anchor “in which he confided that he wanted to sleep with her.” Then, on a late night in March following the NCAA’s March Madness selection show, the hoops team headed to a bar in Bristol. Tirico reportedly confronted the producer as she was walking to the bar and allegedly said, “I wish I was single. If I was, I would throw you on the table right here and fukk your brains out.” She claims he added, “I know you want to screw me…so let’s leave.” She told him to stop, and then joined a group of ESPN colleagues who were on the way to Denny’s. She soon left, got in her car, and drove home on the Interstate-84. “Suddenly [she] noticed a car pulling up on her left. She peered indifferent at its driver, then froze, realizing it was Tirico,” said the book. “Tirico was waving his hand in a motion that she interpreted to mean he wanted her to pull over. Instead, she continued driving, increasing her speed significantly. Tirico increased his speed as well, staying alongside her.” The woman allegedly decided to hit her brakes suddenly and veer towards the exit, losing Tirico.
Later, Tirico allegedly approached the female producer just minutes before the show aired and tried to apologize, but she said, “If you ever do that again, I’ll kick your ass.”
According to the book, word soon spread throughout the newsroom of the Tirico incident with his producer, and “other women came to her with their own horror stories about Tirico,” complaining that he “made references to their physical features, touched them inappropriately, or expressed his desire to have sex with them.”
The book claims that a total of six women eventually came forward, and
Tirico “was suspended for three months and ordered to seek counseling.”
According to the book, then ESPN executive John Walsh "implied that Tirico's mistakes were a result of his youth and he has become a different person. 'Michael was twenty-four years old then,' Walsh said. 'He has [since] been beyond perfect. He goes out of his way in terms of friendship. He goes out of his way in terms of being good to people. And in fact, he has relationships with many women in the workplace.'" 
