Ahead of Super Bowl Sunday, Mick Mixon, former radio voice of the Carolina Panthers and an alumnus of both UNC and WCHL, took some time this week to chat with Chapelboro’s Michael Koh about his memories of calling Super Bowl 50 between the Panthers and Denver Broncos in 2016. The Panthers lost the game 24-10, but Mixon still has memories from that week to last a lifetime.
Click here to listen to the full conversation.
Michael Koh: For most Americans out there who have never been to a Super Bowl, what is that whole week, or really two weeks, like?
Mick Mixon: I don’t know if I have the word for it. I remember walking uptown [in Charlotte]: there was a pep rally. The Panthers hadn’t quite left yet to go to Santa Clara. My job required of me to emcee a pep rally uptown. I told my wife, Dawn, I said, just come with me. We’ll walk uptown from work and go to the pep rally. I’m thinking, I don’t know, a couple thousand people. We turned the corner up near the baseball stadium uptown, and there was over 30,000 people. Just hooting and howling, and t-shirts and Sir Purr [the Panthers mascot] and the Top Cats [the Panthers cheerleaders] and players, the head coach, coach [Ron] Rivera. That’s when it hit me: wait a second, this is big. And man, the memories will last a lifetime. But coupled in with that is the memory of a loss that still stings even this many years later.
Carolina Panthers fans hold a pep rally in Charlotte prior to Super Bowl 50. (Image via Mick Mixon)
Michael Koh: And I’m just curious: the game was played in San Francisco, about as far away from Charlotte as you could get and still be at an NFL stadium. What was the fan split like between Denver and Carolina fans?
Mick Mixon: Pretty even. I think the NFL sort of sees to that with how they distribute ticket. And people have ways they get in. There’s the secondary ticket market. I remember getting tickets for my bride and for our son who’s in his early 30s. He’s huge. Played high school football, loves football. And Jonathan’s flying out there with his mom to Santa Clara, and he looks at the face value of the ticket as $1,800.
So he’s thinking, ‘Wait a second, I’ve got a Visa card bill I could zero out, but I want to go to the game.’ And that’s just face value, not to say what it could have sold for, had he decided to get me fired by selling his ticket, which he was under strict orders not to even think about.
Michael Koh: Are there any special perks that radio personnel get before or during the game that you would not get for a regular season game?
Mick Mixon: Not that I remember. I mean, there’s a hat and a gym bag and this and that, but I’ve never been a big trinket guy in those ways. I just have the memories. I’ve told people before that when a singer named Stefani Germanotta, better known to you perhaps as Lady Gaga, when she sang the national anthem, when the Blue Angels came flying over, whatever those are, I don’t know, F-18s. When those things came by at the lowest and the slowest they could possibly go to not fall out of the sky at perfect formation, I could have played in the game. I could have put on a pair of shoulder pads. I was so fired up. I could have covered a kickoff.
Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA, just before kickoff of Super Bowl 50. (Image via Mick Mixon)
Michael Koh: When you were calling the game, did you kind of slip into a groove or a rhythm where everything else kind of muted out? Or did you keep telling yourself, man, I’m actually calling the Super Bowl on radio right now?
Mick Mixon: That’s a good question. I think maybe the former. The bigness of it, the pageantry of it, kickoff feels like it’s never gonna get there. You’ve got America the Beautiful, you’ve got the national anthem, you’ve got Salute to Service, you’ve got all kinds of crazy stuff going on all around you. Sensory overload.
And then the game starts and the Panthers fell behind so early, missed a couple opportunities early, and I just sort of started focusing on, ‘OK, here’s the game. Please don’t tell me we’ve flown all this way and come all this way to lose this thing against a team that I think the Panthers would’ve beaten seven out of 10 times at a neutral site.’
Michael Koh: Looking back on that day, roughly what is your estimate of when you began and ended work?
Mick Mixon: We flew out there a week early, maybe eight days early. So I bet that I was interviewed, I was poked and prodded and interviewed more than should even be legal. And it’s not that I’m any great interview, it’s just that there’s so many TV stations, there’s so many radio stations, there’s so many websites, newspapers and magazines that they have to interview somebody, right? And like an idiot I agreed. I said yes to every single thing.
So I’m on the morning TV show. I’m up at 5:00 AM California time maybe one day after we flew out there on some morning show. I was about exhausted by the time the game got got here. But you run on the adrenaline.
Michael Koh: It must have felt like you were at Super Bowl Media Day, right?
Mick Mixon: Oh yeah, Media Day. It’s a big crush of humanity. People all up around you. I’m not a big fan of hypothetical questions. I mean, you may love them. They’re fun for fireside chats and hanging out at the beach or what have you. But for an athlete, for a coach, what’s the point?
‘If you could do it all over again…’, well, you can’t do it all over again. So I just got to where I wanted to punch somebody in the throat because I was sick to death of these hypothetical questions.
Mick Mixon (middle) at Super Bowl 50 with executive producer David Langton (left) and color analyst Jim Szoke (right). (Image via Mick Mixon)
Michael Koh: What is a misconception that the general public has about either Super Bowl week or the Super Bowl game itself?
Mick Mixon: I’m just gonna tell you my misconception. Early in my time with the Panthers, John Fox, who was then the head coach, and Marty Hurney, the general manager, were talking about how emotionally eviscerating it is to lose a Super Bowl. And they told me you would rather not go than go and lose. And I said to myself, ‘That is absolutely psychotic.’ That’s crazy. How can you win if you don’t go? You and I wouldn’t be talking right now about the 2015-16 Carolina Panthers season and about this game had the Panthers not gone, right? That’s crazy. They’re stupid.
But then Panthers lose Super Bowl 50, and I find myself at the postgame party back at the hotel with a 10-piece horn band, with an ice sculpture about 10 feet tall. But there’s no celebration because you lost the daggum game and you realize that this group of athletes, this group of people will never be together again in this same way.
And I thought, ‘Man, John Fox and Marty Hurney may have had a point.’
Michael Koh: Have there been any reunions that you’ve gone to of that team?
Mick Mixon: No. The pieces break apart gradually, slowly. NFL rosters are living, breathing things. They’re constantly shedding their skin like a snake and remaking themselves. To your earlier point, nobody’s really that hyped up about a reunion because you didn’t win it. But had you won it, it’s a career-definer, not for broadcasters, of course, because we’re nobody. But for the coaches, the general manager, the scouts, the players, you make indelible marks on history. Whereas to go and lose, you’re the answer to a trivia question. ‘Who did Peyton Manning beat when he won?’ So it’s a little bit nauseating.
Featured image via Mick Mixon
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