Dan Hicks, the longtime NBC Sports broadcaster whose voice was a fixture of championship golf, Notre Dame football and the Olympic Games, has died. He was 64.
Hicks died Wednesday, Nov. 11, following what his family described as an acute illness. His wife, ESPN anchor Hannah Storm, announced the news on social media Thursday.
“Our family is heartbroken by the sudden and unexpected passing of Dan,” Storm wrote.
Storm and Hicks met while both worked at CNN and married in 1994. Along with his wife, Hicks is survived by the couple’s three daughters. No further details about his illness were released.
A Tucson, Arizona, native, Hicks graduated from the University of Arizona in 1984 and got his start in local radio before becoming a weekend sports anchor at KVOA, the NBC affiliate in Tucson. He joined CNN as a national sports anchor in 1989. There he hosted “CNN Sports Tonight” along with the network’s college football and college basketball preview shows.
He moved to NBC Sports in the summer of 1992, beginning a 34-year run that made him one of the network’s longest-serving on-air personalities.
Over those decades, Hicks called NFL games for NBC from 1992 to 1998 and worked the network’s NBA coverage in the 1990s. In 2000, he became the lead play-by-play voice of NBC’s golf coverage, the role he was best known for. NBC Sports called him the “signature voice” of its golf broadcasts.
Hicks first called Notre Dame football for NBC from 2013 through 2016. He returned as the lead voice of the package in 2024 and was scheduled to call a game this coming weekend.
He was also a mainstay of NBC’s Olympic coverage, working 16 Games beginning with the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. One of his most memorable calls came at the 2008 Beijing Games, when he and analyst Rowdy Gaines described Team USA’s come-from-behind win over France in the men’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay. Hicks won a Sports Emmy as part of NBC’s coverage of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Tributes poured in from across the sports world Thursday.
In a joint statement, NBC Sports president Rick Cordella and executive producers Sam Flood and Molly Solomon remembered Hicks as “an extraordinary colleague, friend and person.” They praised him as an exceptional storyteller who elevated some of the biggest moments in sports history.
Versant Media CEO Mark Lazarus said he was heartbroken. He called Hicks “one of the very best at what he did” and said their friendship reached far beyond NBC Sports.
The PGA Tour also mourned the broadcaster, noting that he had led NBC’s golf coverage for more than 25 years.
“We are devastated by the sudden loss of Dan Hicks,” the Tour said.
ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro said the network was deeply saddened by the death of a respected voice in sports broadcasting and the husband of one of its own anchors.
On NBC’s “Today” show, Craig Melvin became emotional as he closed Thursday’s third hour by remembering Hicks as a dear friend and a beloved member of the NBC family.
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