Michele Tafoya will work her final NFL game this Sunday. She will be on the sidelines of the Super Bowl for the fifth time in her career. After that, she is stepping away from sports for an as-yet-unnamed opportunity.
On Monday, Tafoya and the rest of the NBC team covering the game met with the media. She was asked what it meant to her to be less than a week away from her final NFL game.
“I don’t want to be part of the story necessarily, but I do appreciate, more than ever this opportunity to do a fifth Super Bowl, to do it with this crew,” She answered. “I’ve worked a lot with this crew, and they are a family of mine.”
Michele Tafoya mentioned that while she is happy to be able to spend less time on the road and more time with her family, it is hard to say goodbye to so many people that have been a part of her life for such a long time. Leaving them will not be easy.
“I’ve been talking to guys this week that I’ve known for so long and sharing stories and just talking about how that’s going to be the hard part.”
During a conference call to announce the end of her tenure with NBC Sports, Tafoya acknowledged that she had initially planned to leave the sports world behind before the 2020 NFL season. Once Covid-19 became a factor, she felt like NBC needed as much stability as it could possibly have during what was sure to be a strange NFL season.
At the time, Michele Tafoya and her NBC colleagues insisted that she was not being forced out. She reiterated on Monday that she had come to a point where she felt she had accomplished all she needed to in the sports realm.
“We were all talking about how you get to a certain point, and you’ve chased what you wanted to chase, a particular arena in your life, and there are other things you want to chase, and that’s how I feel, and I feel strongly about that.”
