Courtesy USA Today

(August 11, 2010) Mike Mayock can quickly come up with at least two names —ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit and ex-CBS analyst Billy Packer— who were hardly superstars in their sports but still became top-tier TV analysts. "I've done some homework on this."

Because now he has joined the tiny club, having been named to replace Pat Haden on NBC's Notre Dame home games as he remains an NFL Network studio analyst — and its on-air NFL draft star — and calls Minnesota Vikings preseason TV games.

Mayock, 51, didn't get there through his on-field résumé. After drawing no interest from Notre Dame, he played at Boston College. Drafted as a safety by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 10th round in 1981, he didn't make that team but managed nine games over two seasons with the New York Giants before a knee injury ended his career in 1983.

"That's one of my pet peeves and frustrations — it's an industry that's hard to get into if you're not a household name," he says of broadcasting. "A lot of TV executives don't like to hear this, but it's one of the few industries where guys running the ship know less than the guys they're hiring. When we're talking (X's and O's) gobbledygook, a lot of these guys don't know who's right or wrong and just go off name and reputation."

Mayock started calling high school radio games in the 1980s in Philadelphia, where he kept his day job in commercial real estate until joining NFLN in 2005. He called college football on local New Jersey TV, then on ESPN, and he became a CBS game analyst in the 1990s before he was dropped, he says, "because they basically told me I didn't have a big enough name."

The name game came up after an NFLN audition — "I thought I killed it" — and he didn't get the prominent on-air job he was after. He felt he'd won it, but figured "they'd give it to a big-name guy who doesn't do his homework." Instead, he says, he was hired to focus on college draft prospects and was told by NFLN: "There's Mel Kiper and nobody else, and you can take it any way you want."

Mayock has made his mark with meat and potatoes. For NBC's Notre Dame games, he was assured he could "be a pure football guy who's going to call it down themiddle."

On the Minnesota Vikings, he says he's "tired of talking about Brett Favre. As an industry in general, we spend way too much time on the low-hanging fruit — banging it to death."

Because, going slow and steady can still make you into a name.

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