Michael James Hall (born February 20, 1982 in Glen Ellyn, Illinois) is an American sports broadcaster who works for the Big Ten Network. He can also be found as a sideline reporter for

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL) games on

Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

. Hall is a graduate of the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus University of Missouri System. MU was founded in ...

where he majored in journalism.

Biography

''Dream Job''

Hall is perhaps best known for being the winner of the first season of

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

reality television Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring unfamiliar people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early ...

show ''

Dream Job ''Dream Job'' is an American reality television show made by ESPN, which began on February 22, 2004. It was the network's second reality show, with two editions of ''Beg, Borrow & Deal'' having previously aired. However, this was the first realit ...

''. For his efforts, Hall won a one-year contract to be an anchor on ESPN's popular sports news program '' SportsCenter'' and a new

Mazda 3 , commonly referred to as simply Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automotive manufacturer headquartered in Fuchū, Hiroshima, Japan. In 2015, Mazda produced 1.5 million vehicles for global sales, the majority of which (nearly one mi ...

. On the night that he won, March 28, 2004, Hall also took a sports quiz to raise his salary. His salary started at $70,000. He then answered five trivia questions, each correct answer worth $5,000, to bump his first-year salary to $95,000.

ESPN

On May 15, 2004, Hall graduated from the University of Missouri. At 1 a.m.

Eastern Daylight Time The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico, Panama, Colombia, mainland Ecuador, Peru, and a small p ...

on July 20, 2004, Hall began his stint as an official ''SportsCenter'' anchor alongside

Linda Cohn Linda Cohn (born ) is an American sportscaster. She anchors ESPN's ''SportsCenter''. Early life and education Cohn grew up in a Jewish family on Long Island, New York. As a child, she would watch sports on TV with her father, who is a huge sp ...

, having already done some work for

ESPNews ESPNews (pronounced "ESPN News", stylized ESPNEWS) is an American multinational digital cable and satellite television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between the Disney Media Networks division of The Walt Disney Company (which owns ...

. Before Missouri, he attended historic

Glenbard West High School Glenbard West High School is a public four-year high school located at the corner of Ellyn Avenue and Crescent Boulevard in Glen Ellyn, a western suburb of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. It is part of Glenbard Township High School Distri ...

. Hall also appeared on ESPN, and occasionally

ESPN2 ESPN2 is an American multinational pay television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and Hearst Communications (which owns the remaining 20%). ESPN2 was initially fo ...

, broadcasting college games including the Division I NCAA Frozen Four National Championship. He used to be the featured on-air personality at

's network devoted to college sports, ESPNU. On March 4, 2005 he was the opening promo for the first ever program on ESPNU, a basketball game at Gallagher-Iba arena on the campus of Oklahoma State University (OSU) between OSU and Texas. ESPN's ''

Pardon the Interruption ''Pardon the Interruption'' (abbreviated ''PTI'') is an American sports talk television show that airs weekdays on various ESPN TV channels. It is hosted by Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, who discuss, and frequently argue over, the top stor ...

'' reported during its "Happy Trails!" segment on April 27, 2007, that Hall was leaving ESPNU to move back to the

Chicago area The Chicago metropolitan area, also colloquially referred to as Chicagoland, is a metropolitan area in the Midwestern United States. Encompassing 10,286 sq mi (28,120 km2), the metropolitan area includes the city of Chicago, its suburbs and hi ...

, where he would pursue other job opportunities.

Big Ten Network and Fox Sports

Beginning in 2007, Hall is employed with the Big Ten Network. While at the network, Hall has hosted signature programs including Big Ten football pregames/halftimes/postgames, ''Friday Night Tailgate'', ''Big Ten Football Report'', ''BTN Live'' on

Sirius/XM satellite radio Sirius XM Holdings Inc. is an American broadcasting company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City that provides satellite radio and online radio services operating in the United States. It was formed by the 2008 merger of Sirius Sat ...

, ''Big Ten Basketball & Beyond'' and Big Ten Basketball pre-game, halftime, and wrap-up segments. Hall also makes appearances doing sideline reporting for '' The NFL on Fox''. as well as for the network's coverage of the Big Ten men's basketball tournament. In 2016 the network gave Hall his own late night comedy show, ''Sports Lite''. It was a sports twist on "The Soup" where he did a monologue in front of a live studio audience, and aired feature pieces with him in the field showing athlete's goofing off with him, as well as utilizing comedians in NYC and LA interviewing famous Big Ten fans.

Improv comedy

Hall performed

improv comedy Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted: created spontaneously by the performers. In its purest form, the dialogue, a ...

iO Chicago iO, or iO Chicago, (formerly known as "ImprovOlympic") is an improv theater and training center in central Chicago, with a former branch in Los Angeles, called iO West and in Raleigh, North Carolina called iO South. The theater taught and hosted ...

for more than a decade with various teams including Wonderbat (co-starring SNL's Alex Moffat), Electric Mayhem, and Coup de Grace and at The Playground with Boyish. He frequently would be seen showing up at Second City to do guest performances during the improv sets.

References

External links

''Columbia-Missourian'' story about Hall's new job at ESPNU on the day the network launched

Press release from espn.com about Hall's being named top anchor

Article from ''Sports Illustrated on Campus'' on Hall
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hall, Mike Reality show winners American television sports announcers 1982 births Living people University of Missouri alumni People from Glen Ellyn, Illinois National Football League announcers College football announcers College basketball announcers in the United States College hockey announcers in the United States