College Basketball Broadcaster, John Fanta

SI Media With Jimmy Traina

Sports Illustrated

Sports

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2026

⏱️ 98 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 599 of "SI Media With Jimmy Traina" features a conversation with NBC college basketball broadcaster, John Fanta.

Fanta talks about wanting to be a versatile broadcaster who does it all, why he left Fox for NBC, using social media to help build his career, hearing from big names in sports media about his work, the difference between calling a college basketball game and NBA game and his work on NBC’s college football coverage.

In addition, Fanta talks about this year’s NCAA Tournament, breaks down certain aspects of the bracket, reveals what he’d change about the Tournament, explains how he’ll watch the Tournament and shares his rules for entering bracket pools.

Fanta, who recently went viral for his preview of the St. Johns-UConn Big East Final, also reveals that he didn’t script the piece and it was all off the top of his head. He also shares some truly amazing Bill Raftery stories.

Following Fanta, Sal Licata from SNY TV and “The Sal Licata Show,” joins Jimmy for their weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment. This week, Sal talks about his new relationship with none other than Jerry Seinfeld. Sal also shares a horrible travel experience while Jimmy rants about the best steakhouse in New York, Peter Luger’s.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome everyone to SI Media with Jimmy Traynor.
0:06.0	Thank you so much for listening.
0:07.7	NCAA Tournament League.
0:09.4	If you're one of the people listening to this early,
0:11.3	you'll get this in before things start at noon on Thursday.
0:14.3	Your Friday, Saturday, Sunday listener tournament will be in full swing.
0:17.8	So you will want to hear this interview.
0:19.5	I am John Fanta from NBC Sports on this week's show.
0:24.0	He was tremendous.
0:26.0	Might have been the best ever interview for a first time guest I've ever done.
0:31.0	Just an unbelievably likable guy.
0:33.0	Great stuff about the business, great stuff about college basketball, the tournament.
0:37.1	Really enjoyed the
0:37.8	interview with John. And then following my interview with John Fana, we have the train of thought
0:42.6	segment with Sal Akata, who is now friends with Jerry Seinfeld and went to a Mets game with him
0:47.1	over the weekend and had a disaster travel situation. So this is a big show. Both segments,
0:53.0	tremendous. I don't want to waste your time. We'll get to it right away right after I just do a quick plug. If you missed any recent episodes, make sure you check them out. Richard Deich from Sports Business Journal was on last week. Alex Sherman from CNBC the week before. John O'ran from Puck, Ben Koo from awful announcing. I've done a lot of sports media news pods recently. So check those out if you missed any of those and make sure you subscribe to S-I Media with Jimmy Trana. If you have not listened to this pod before, your first time or subscribe and follow. All right. Let's get to it. You could also rate and review on Apple. That would be lovely. I would be so ecstatic if you did that. All right. Now let's get to it. You could also rate and review on Apple. That would be lovely.
1:29.5	I would be so ecstatic if you did that.
1:30.0	All right.
1:31.5	Now let's get to it.
1:36.8	John Fanna from NBC Sports, the college basketball guru, followed by Traynor thoughts.
1:42.8	And Jerry Seinfeld's new friend, Sal Licata, all right here, right now. On SI media with jimmy trainer all right joining me now huge week for him
	...

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