NBC Announces 17-Year Broadcasting Veteran as Dan Hicks’ Replacement for Notre Dame-Boston College Game
from Essentially College Sports
Jason Benetti(back in the day, HPU Panthers play-by-play man for basketball) will have a different kind of assignment when he arrives at Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday. The broadcaster is used to calling baseball’s biggest moments, but this time he is stepping into a football booth after the sudden passing of Dan Hicks.
The Hollywood Reporter reported on November 12 that NBC Sports has turned to Benetti to handle play-by-play for Notre Dame’s game against Boston College, replacing Hicks.
Benetti will work alongside analyst Jason Garrett and sideline reporter Caroline Pineda, the same crew originally scheduled to call the game with Hicks. Reggie Smith is listed as the rules analyst.
Hicks died on November 11 at the age of 64 following what his family described as an acute illness. His death came just a day after NBC’s original announcement of its Saturday broadcast team.
The network had listed him as the play-by-play voice in its November 10 programming release, making the change an especially sudden one.
Benetti is not a newcomer to college football, even if baseball has become his most prominent assignment. His path to the NBC booth began in 2009 with the Syracuse Chiefs, where he became lead play-by-play announcer in 2010 and stayed through 2014.
From 2011 to 2022, he also worked at ESPN, covering MLB on television and radio, college football and basketball, and Statcast-driven alternate broadcasts. He then called Chicago White Sox games for NBC Sports Chicago for eight seasons, through 2023, and took over the Detroit Tigers’ TV booth in 2024. Along the way, he began handling national broadcasts for Fox Sports in 2022 and has also called the NCAA men’s basketball tournament for Westwood One.
NBC was already familiar territory. He had called baseball for the network at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and hosted Peacock’s MLB Sunday Leadoff in 2022, and in March 2026 he returned full-time as the voice of Sunday Night Baseball on NBC and Peacock. That breadth, including plenty of football, is why NBC could turn to him on short notice without leaning on someone new to the sport.
Filling in for Hicks on a single Saturday is an easy call for NBC to make. Filling the space he leaves in the network’s sports coverage is far harder.
Hicks arrived at NBC in 1992 and grew into one of its most recognizable voices, particularly in golf and at the Olympics. Notre Dame football was part of that résumé too: he called the Irish for NBC from 2013 through 2016, until Mike Tirico took the assignment. He came back to it in 2024, working home games alongside Garrett and Pineda, but football was only a small part of his career.
Golf was where he spent most of his time. He called it for NBC for more than twenty years and became the network’s lead PGA Tour announcer in 2000, with the U.S. Open, Ryder Cup and Players Championship among the events he covered.
His wife, ESPN’s Hannah Storm, shared the heartbreaking news of his death on social media on behalf of the family.
“Our family is heartbroken by the sudden and unexpected passing of Dan following an acute illness,” she wrote.
Hicks is survived by his wife and their three daughters, along with friends and colleagues who knew him beyond his work in the booth. Several NBC broadcasters and other sports media figures have since shared tributes.
“Dan Hicks was an extraordinary colleague, friend and person,” NBC Sports said in a statement. “In his 34 years at NBC Sports, he was an exceptional storyteller and caller of games and events who elevated some of the biggest moments in sports history.”
Benetti’s first assignment with the Irish comes at an important point in their season. Notre Dame is 8-1 and ranked No. 5 in the playoff rankings ahead of Saturday’s game. The Fighting Irish are coming off a 31-24 win over No. 1 Miami, a result that strengthened their position in the playoff race.
Benetti’s appointment is for Saturday’s game. NBC has another Notre Dame broadcast scheduled for November 21 against SMU, but it has not confirmed who will handle that assignment. Nor has the network announced a permanent successor for Dan Hicks’ other major roles in golf and Olympic coverage.