Nicole Auerbach talks ski jump scandals and cross-country skiing in first NBC Olympic assignment

NBC has aired every Winter Olympics since 2002, in Salt Lake City, UT. At this point, its broadcast teams are chock-full of grizzled veterans, many of whom have covered a dozen or more Games for the network (which started broadcasting the Summer Games in 1988).

Over the years, those broadcasters have gained a level of expertise and comfort in sports they may not see very often between quadrennial Olympic cycles. It’s a key reason NBC’s coverage of the Games is so well received year after year.

But what’s it like to cover the Olympics on television for the first time? In sports scarcely seen on TV, but for every four years during the Olympics? Awful Announcing caught up with Nicole Auerbach, who is currently covering her first Olympics for NBC Sports, to see what it’s like.

Auerbach is serving as a reporter for both the ski jumping and cross-country skiing competitions. Of course, she’s best known as one of the preeminent reporters on the college football beat, appearing as an analyst for NBC’s Big Ten studio. But right now, she’s neck-deep in ski jumping controversies rather than North Dakota State’s jump from D-II to the Mountain West.

(This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.)

AA: When you were starting your career in sports journalism, did you ever think you’d be covering ski jumping and cross-country skiing at the Olympics?

NA: No. But I will tell you my very first internship was with The Trentonian in Trenton, NJ, and I covered drag racing, Little League softball, and Little League baseball. I’ve always said this: If you’re interviewing 12-and-under baseball and softball players, you can do anything. They cannot give you quotes; you’re pulling teeth. And then drag racing, it was like a three-second race. So you’re trying to figure out human interest angles behind these things.

So I do think I’ve covered a lot of sports and events that I was not previously familiar with, and I think it’s part of the fun of the job, that it’s unpredictable and you never know exactly what you’re going to do. Especially an Olympics. I covered three Summer Olympics as a writer for USA Today and The Athletic.

So you do get thrown in on sports, like a one-off event, ‘Go and cover pole vaulting for the day.’ But you gotta learn the rules, the context, the history, and do those stories justice too. I like it because I think it’s a fun challenge that you’re never going to do otherwise. You’re never going to see these sports unless you grew up in them. These events mean everything to the athletes, and you really do want to do them justice. It’s so fun to learn about something you didn’t know much about beforehand.

AA: You’re coming off a busy season covering college football. When have you found the time to learn two sports that are brand new to you?

NA: I found out the sports that I was getting early in the fall. As [the Olympics] have gotten closer, and certainly after the regular season ended, because there are lags with football where there are those gaps between the rounds of the playoffs, it definitely slows down a little bit in December in terms of actual games. I felt like I wasn’t traveling as much, and so I was able to start prepping for cross-country skiing and ski jumping.

NBC has an amazing research team, so they put together these really detailed manuals with bios of all the athletes and history of the sport. I’m currently reading [American cross-country skier] Jessie Diggins’ memoir that she wrote in 2019. Just trying to figure out the key players, what you need to know about them, what they’ve put out, and then just really utilizing NBC’s research materials.

My entire Instagram feed’s now all skiers. You’re just tracking to see what everyone’s doing in the lead-up to the Olympics for all these different countries. It’s a bit of a crash course, but I guess I’ve been trying to methodically make time for studying and prep since the beginning of December.

AA: Did anything in your research stand out to you?

NA: My very first day when I got assigned ski jumping, I was having dinner with some friends who have covered a lot of Olympics over the years, and they were like, ‘You know, ski jumping is a great sport to get because they have that big scandal.’ And I was like, ‘Ooh, tell me about it.’

Anyways, the NBC research manual had so much on this. Norway had this big scandal last year where they were manipulating the uniforms to try and create more drag so they could fly longer in the air, like more aerodynamic lift. Literally, the smoking gun was this video of someone, like a whistleblower, taking this video of a sewing machine manipulating the cloth on the material of the uniform.

AA: Was the Olympics part of your vision when deciding to take a job with NBC in 2023?

NA: I was hopeful that someday I could get to contribute to Olympics sports for NBC.

I was at USA Today after college, and we had a re-org, and the reporter who had been covering swimming went to go teach. So I got put on swimming right before Olympic trials that year. It was like, ‘Here is your Olympic sport.’ That has been my summer sport that I’ve covered from a writing standpoint. But it wasn’t like a dream to do the Olympics; I was just so fortunate to work somewhere that really invested a lot of resources into covering the Olympics and gave me a shot when I was 23.

I loved it, and I’ve really valued those experiences. I still say the Rio swimming experience was the single greatest sporting event that I’ve ever covered. There were just so many world records. It was Katie Ledecky’s emergence. It was the Lilly King Russia Cold War stuff. You had Michael Phelps’ final Olympics.

So I’ve always loved it, but I never assumed I’d get to continue covering Olympics, just because it depends where you work and the resources.

When I came to NBC, I was hopeful that I’d get to contribute someday because it’s something I really enjoy and I love and I think it’s such a special event, those two or three weeks where the entire world is collectively experiencing something together. It’s just, you’re watching these feats of athleticism you never could have envisioned. It’s so cool. I never take any of it for granted because I feel like the Olympics are their own special sport and their own special experience that you can never just assume you get to do in your career in sports journalism. It’s a dream come true.

AA: Are you hoping to be involved in NBC’s coverage of the LA28 Olympics in two years?

NA: Well, that decision is out of my hands. I would love to. I would absolutely hope and love to contribute to the coverage of the 2028 Olympics. Especially because it’s a home Olympics, I just think it’s going to be bigger than we could probably imagine.

I was thinking back about being a kid when the 1996 Atlanta Olympics happened, and just how big a deal that was, and how excited I was watching sports with my parents every night on the couch. I just think this is going to be one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

So yeah, I’m hoping that I can contribute or be asked to contribute. Again, not my decision, but it’d be an honor to be part of coverage for such a special Olympics.