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NBC Sports and Overtime announced Tuesday that OT7’s championship weekend will air live on NBC and Peacock for the first time, with the finals on Saturday, June 13, and the championship on Sunday, June 14, both at 2 p.m. ET from Sullivan Field at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
John Fanta, the boisterous basketball play-by-play voice who has been NBC’s most versatile new addition since arriving from Fox last August, will handle the call alongside sports content creator Kieran Hickey-Semple. Former USC and Vanderbilt quarterback Mo Hasan and Overtime chief growth officer Tom Weingarten will report from the sidelines.
The OT7 assignment is just the latest sport Fanta has been deployed to cover since joining NBC. He was hired primarily as the network’s lead Big East basketball play-by-play voice, but his first year has since taken him to Football Night in America, NBA play-by-play alongside Jamal Crawford, the infield at the Kentucky Derby, and, most recently, MLB reporting on Sunday Leadoff.
When Fanta made his NBA debut in February, he told Awful Announcing that NBC executives Sam Flood, Rick Cordella, and Elyse Noonan had promised to keep challenging him. “This is why I joined NBC Sports,” he said. That also meant turning down a job offer from Barstool’s Dave Portnoy, which Fanta described to Zach Gelb as genuinely tempting before deciding he’d rather build out his linear television profile. The OT7 assignment suggests NBC is still holding up its end of the bargain.
OT7 itself has built a legitimate case as the premier proving ground for high school football talent in the country. Now in its fifth season, OT7 has seen three players come through — wide receivers Carnell Tate (Titans), Makai Lemon (Eagles), and KC Concepcion (Browns) — who were taken in the first round of this year’s NFL Draft. Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith, a unanimous All-American last fall, came through the league, as did Oregon quarterback Dante Moore. This weekend’s championship field features 19 five-star recruits across eight teams, headlined by C1N — coached by 2015 NFL MVP Cam Newton — and the Wunna Warriors, the team founded and coached by Grammy-nominated rapper Gunna. The No. 1 player in the class of 2026, Houston quarterback commit Keisean Henderson, who became the first underclassman named MVP of the Navy All-American Bowl, is also expected to participate.
NBC and Overtime announced a broader programming, distribution, and sales partnership in April that covers both OT7 and the Navy All-American Bowl. Tuesday’s announcement also included the launch of an All-American Girls Flag Football initiative, which will recognize top high school flag football players and have them compete during the OT7 championship weekend in 2027.
The post NBC taps John Fanta for OT7 championship weekend coverage appeared first on Awful Announcing.
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