Mike Pesca
Mike Pesca first reached the airwaves as a 10-year-old caller to a New York Jets-themed radio show and has since been able to parlay his interests in sports coverage as a National Desk correspondent for NPR based in New York City.
Pesca enjoys training his microphone on anything that occurs at a track, arena, stadium, park, fronton, velodrome or air strip (i.e. the plane drag during the World's Strongest Man competition). He has reported from Los Angeles, Cleveland and Gary. He has also interviewed former Los Angeles Ram Cleveland Gary. Pesca is a panelist on the weekly Slate podcast "Hang up and Listen".
In 1997, Pesca began his work in radio as a producer at WNYC. He worked on the NPR and WNYC program On The Media. Later he became the New York correspondent for NPR's midday newsmagazine Day to Day, a job that has brought him to the campaign trail, political conventions, hurricane zones and the Manolo Blahnik shoe sale. Pesca was the first NPR reporter to have his own podcast, a weekly look at gambling cleverly titled "On Gambling with Mike Pesca."
Pesca, whose writing has appeared in Slate and The Washington Post, is the winner of two Edward R. Murrow awards for radio reporting and, in1993, was named Emory University Softball Official of the Year.
He lives in Manhattan with his wife Robin, sons Milo and Emmett and their dog Rumsfeld. A believer in full disclosure, Pesca rates his favorite teams as the Jets, Mets, St. Johns Red Storm and Knicks, teams he has covered fairly and without favor despite the fact that they have given him a combined one championship during his lifetime as a fully cognizant human.
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Commentator Mike Pesca thinks the popularity of March Madness, the NCAA's annual basketball tournament, has less to do the game and a lot do to with the structure.
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Former University of Missouri football player Michael Sam revealed over the weekend that he is gay. Sam, an All-American defensive lineman, may become the first openly gay player in the history of the NFL if he is selected in this year's draft. Since he made his announcement, reactions have streamed in from every corner of the football world.
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The Seattle Seahawks have won their first Super Bowl. They beat the Denver Broncos 43-8 Sunday night at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.
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Ahead of Sunday's Super Bowl XLVIII, NPR's Mike Pesca dams up the river of hype to create a cool lagoon of Super Bowl reason.
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Endorsement deals can offer retired players millions beyond their sports or TV contracts. In return for these millions, these former Hall of Famers plug the product they're endorsing. But some take the endorsements to an extreme, sprinkling brand names into conversations that have nothing to do with those products.
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This Sunday's Super Bowl features the team with the No. 1 defense — the Seattle Seahawks — against the team with the No. 1 offense, the Denver Broncos. That is surprisingly rare, and has happened just a few times in the 48 Super Bowls to date.
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John Moffitt once played for the Seattle Seahawks, but before this season opened, he was traded to the Denver Broncos. In midseason, as the Broncos were battling their way to the Super Bowl, he quit the team. Moffitt talks about why he walked away and what it's like to watch his two former teams make it to the NFL's biggest game.
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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently toyed with the idea of getting rid of the extra point — the post-touchdown, 1-point kick that's successful 99.5 percent of the time.
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To get to the championship game, the Denver Broncos beat the New England Patriots in the AFC championship game 26-16. The NFC championship game was close but the Seattle Seahawks defeated the San Francisco 49ers 23-17.
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A federal judge on Tuesday rejected a preliminary settlement between the National Football League and retired players and their families over concussion-related injuries. The judge doubted that the $765 million settlement would adequately cover all of the retired players potentially eligible to be paid.