Have you been “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night?”
The Carrie Underwood anthem that kicks off NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcast is a staple in more than 20 million households each week. It still excites the Grammy-winning singer and new American Idol judge to be part of such a popular American tradition.
“Growing up we didn’t have cable or anything like that, so whatever was on TV was what we watched. Fortunately, that was a lot of football on Sundays,” Underwood told Yahoo Entertainment.
Underwood’s been the face of Sunday Night Football since 2013, and even though she initially declined the offer nearly two decades ago — more on that later — she said seizing the opportunity when she did meant “it worked out exactly how it should have.” Not only is it “pretty awesome to be a part of the biggest show on TV,” but it also gets her some cool points with her two sons, ages 9 and 5.
“They love seeing me on TV. But even with younger kids who obviously did not see me on American Idol or early in my career, to some kiddos, [SNF] is what they know me from,” she laughed. “So I’ll take it. That’s really amazing.”
SNF has been primetime television’s No. 1 show for 13 consecutive years, so with that comes some pressure to make each year bigger and better. This upcoming season is no different.
“I feel like they do such a great job year after year of reinventing and reinvigorating the open,” Underwood said. “People know it’s very comforting to see the open and kind of have a general idea of what it’s gonna feel like. But the way that they go in every year and do what they do to keep it fresh is really cool.”
Keeping the show fresh is paramount to NBC, too. Underwood and the SNF production team talked to Yahoo Entertainment ahead of its Sept. 8 debut about how the show transformed from its 2006 beginnings to its dominance today.
That goes for wardrobe too.
“Carrie and her stylist play a big role in that because she wants to change it up every single year and look a little bit different,” Gaudelli explained. “We’ve never really had any creative differences.”
Underwood said she gets “a color scheme” and they take it from there.
“When we’re trying things on, we want to coordinate with what’s going on around me. But at the end of the day, they always kind of let me pick what I want to wear. Nobody has had any problems with what we’ve picked out,” she said. “We always have to be mindful to not be too team specific. So if I was going to wear blue and orange, it would look like [I’m] a Broncos fan. We try to stay away from that kind of stuff and be kind of neutral — but it’s hard because every color is spoken for! We try to keep it to where nobody would think I’m supporting one specific team.”
For the record, despite growing up a Cowboys fan in Oklahoma, Underwood has no allegiance to one team.
Turning this year’s open ‘upside down’
Rob Hyland, who begins his third season as coordinating producer of SNF, said this year’s open is “by far my favorite.”
“The music is very different. We essentially flipped the song upside down,” he explained to Yahoo. “The song now starts with the chorus, which is something we used to always build toward.”
Dixon said that gave them the opportunity to do something new visually.
“Rather than just having this glam spectacle, highly polished piece, let’s get behind the scenes a little bit,” he explained of the changes this year. “We’re still going to see Carrie in concert. But let’s make it feel like she’s along with us on this national road show, this singular phenomenon that is Sunday Night Football. Let’s bring her along, we’re always on the road going from venue to venue. I think the one thing we really hadn’t done was bring Carrie into the fold.”
Underwood also loves the new energy.
“There’s a lot of movement and kind of switching from environment to environment,” she said. “It’s exciting.”
Hyland wants viewers to feel like they’re on this magic carpet ride each week going from city to city.
Sunday Night Football kicks off Sept. 8 at 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC.
