The 2020 election process saw two men become stars — NBC News’ Steve Kornacki and CNN’s John King — who were tasked with spending seemingly endless hours at the touchscreen to break down the county by county results as counts continued to roll in for the better part of a week after election night.
Kornacki’s performance became such a sensation that khaki sales at the Gap actually saw an uptick, with the clothing store donating 500 pairs of khakis to those in need in his name. NBC also decided to take advantage of his rise to stardom in helping with probabilities and the predictive science of projections by bringing him into the sports world this week for a halftime segment on Sunday Night Football, in which he broke down exactly how the playoff picture in the NFC and AFC had changed after Sunday’s action. For someone who isn’t known as a sports guy, his segment was arguably more informative than most anything you’ll see on a studio show.
How have playoff probabilities changed after today’s games?
We’ve got @NBCNews‘ @SteveKornacki here to break it down for us on the big board! pic.twitter.com/5I4G2jbRTG
— Sunday Night Football (@SNFonNBC) December 7, 2020
The man is a magician with the touchscreen, and while this wasn’t as difficult as hopping from county to county, he still moved through the playoff picture with ease and broke down how teams had moved up and down and why the projection model from PFF had their percentages where — such as Baltimore still being at 47 percent despite a 6-5 record because of the ease of their schedule remaining. For someone that spends most all of their time in the political world, Kornacki’s jump to sports was pretty impressive and, honestly, segments like these that pack a bunch of information into two minutes to offer a full update on the playoff picture each week might not be the worst idea to keep going forward for NBC.