Why host Kylen Mills is excited to join NBC Sports Bay Area’s Giants coverage

Veteran TV host and reporter Kylen Mills is back in the Bay Area after more than two years working in her home state of Illinois.NBC Sports Bay Area announced Monday that Mills is joining the network as its new host of Giants Pregame and Postgame Live beginning this season.Mills has extensive experience in the Bay Area, having worked at KRON4 and the Pac-12 Network, while also hosting A’s Pregame and Postgame Live for NBC Sports California before moving to Chicago.Now, following a two-plus-year stint with the Big Ten Network, Mills begins the next chapter of her career.NBC Sports Bay Area’s Alex Pavlovic spoke to Mills on the latest episode of the “Giants Talk” podcast about her big move.This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.Alex Pavlovic: “Kylen Mills, we’re going to be spending a lot of time in the studio. You’re going to learn about rain delays in the Midwest. So get ready for that. But I feel the same way when people ask me about myself. I know we don’t like giving our bio and we keep it boring. But for Giants fans who will watch you every night on Pre and Post and get to know you, hopefully for years to come, can you give the short version of, and you can be long if you want, but take the short version of like what your background is, where you came from, what you were doing when you took this job. All of that.”Kylen Mills: “Yeah, absolutely. I’ll try to give the condensed version. First of all, this is a return to the Bay Area for me. If my name sounds or looks familiar or I look familiar at all, you may have seen me on your TV at some point. Because I did work for two years at KRON TV and then worked for an additional year, filling in at NBC Sports Bay Area and working at the Pac-12 Network.“So I’m super excited, first of all, to be coming back to the Bay because we love the Bay. My background personally in sports, I grew up playing every single sport, was raised in the Chicago area, in a family of insane sports fans and actually moving to the Bay, I felt like it was very comparable to kind of the culture in Chicago in terms of just like how passionate and knowledgeable the fans are, how big the professional sports scene is, and just kind of the strength of the brand.“So, I felt right at home when I first moved to the Bay for that reason. But then, like I said, growing up, played every sport, played soccer and tennis in college at the Division II level. Lewis University. Shout out. Go Fliers. No one’s ever heard of that. But it’s fine. And then after that, I knew I wanted to get into broadcasting. I’d done it a little bit in high school and was trying to figure out how to incorporate sports into a career of talking. I was the kid who always got in trouble for talking in class. So how do you kind of marry those strengths together?“And started out in local news, kind of bounced around, which is how it works in local TV, is that you work your way up to different markets. So I worked in a bunch of different markets, the Quad Cities, Lexington, Kentucky, Oklahoma City, and then ended up at KRON4 news in the Bay Area before, like I said, kind of branching out and working at sports networks. And now I’m currently in Chicago now, relocating obviously to the Bay, but was most recently in Chicago working at the Big Ten Network and for a bunch of different, Fox Sports, a bunch of different national outlets kind of covering the college baseball scene.“I’m super excited to be back because I love the Bay Area. I love Bay Area sports fans. And like I said, similar to Chicago, very passionate, very knowledgeable, amazing teams. Oracle Park is one of the most beautiful ballparks in the United States. So I just think it’s a great place to be. And it’s a fun team to be around. And I think there’s a lot of excitement about kind of the newness of the season.”Pavlovic: “What is your Giants experience? I know you were in the Bay Area for a while. I guess you were here for the only good season in the last few years. But what’s your best Giants memory?”Mills: “Yeah. So I kind of was thinking about this going into this interview and like, oh man. I got to cover a really cool time. So I moved to the Bay in 2020, moved out in like 2023, 2024. So I got to cover a couple seasons. And that 2021 season, obviously, breaking 100 wins is a big deal. But this is a super random moment.“But I just remember it, and you know how the Giants were at that time with all the platooning they did and the mixing and matching, it was kind of crazy. But mid-September during the NLDS push of 2021, the Giants were playing the Braves. The game went to 11 innings. So it’s the 11th inning. The Giants are out of players because they’ve been you know what I mean, plugging and playing everybody.“So Kevin Gausman gets put into pinch hit and has the game-winning sac fly. And the reason why it’s one of my favorite memories is I tweeted as he was stepping up, I was like, watch Kevin Gausman hit the game-winning walk-off right now and then he did it. So I just remember that being so awesome. I was. I tweeted, ‘We’re all going lit tonight in San Francisco. Kevin Gausman just walked it off for the Giants.’“But what a wild time to follow the team. I mean, it was a lot of fun, obviously, because they did put together wins. But yeah, the whole platooning business made it quite interesting to follow. You never really knew what was going to happen. And obviously, that specific season, it worked. But I’m excited to see more stability in the lineup.“I think this year that’s what my favorite memories and I just think in general, Oracle Park, first moving to the Bay, it was just like kind of eye-opening and McCovey Cove and kind of getting to know all of the personalities and the boaters and the garlic fries, like some of that kind of fun parts about going to a game at Oracle Park was really cool to experience. So whenever I have people visit or come to town, if it’s during baseball season, that’s always one of our first stops. I just think it’s such a cool ballpark.”Pavlovic: “You have a lot of college background. I guess you probably knew about Tony [Vitello] before I did because I, like most of us, had not heard his name until October basically. Have you had any background with him and do you have any perspective on on him just having dealt with [him]? I haven’t covered college sports since 2009, I think so, or 2010, whatever. Do you have any perspective on that on, on what he might do this year?”Mills: “So that’s one of the reasons why I’m actually super excited to be joining the Giants team at NBC Sports Bay Area. I feel like him and I are both coming up from the college ranks. So I worked at the Big Ten Network and for FOX Sports, and mostly covering Big Ten. We didn’t directly cross paths where I would have been interviewing him or covering him in person. But like I hosted the Big Ten baseball tournament. I hosted when our various teams were kind of working their way through the NCAA tournament and trying to make the College World Series.“So, like I was familiar with him. I had seen Tennessee, and had followed just in general, the college baseball landscape. So I think that’s one of the reasons why I’m excited. First of all, his reputation precedes itself, and what he did at the college level was extremely impressive. I think that the culture is going to be really positive with the Giants this season.“Then I think that another thing that maybe people don’t realize who are in the college sports space right now is how much it’s changed and that it’s essentially professional sports. I know there’s a lot being made of the fact that we haven’t seen someone make this jump that he’s made and really for him to have an expectation of being successful with this Giants organization, but I do think the college coaching prepares you now more than it ever has for working in the professional ranks, really in any sports because of the way the NIL, the transfer portal, revenue sharing has completely changed the game. You’re managing rosters, you’re managing personalities like players at the college level now. They all want money. They want to get paid.“Talking to college coaches across the spectrum now, they just talk about how big of a challenge it is in their jobs because they’re not just focused on strategy and winning games. They’re doing all the other stuff. Like I said, having to manage, you know, different personalities. And again, like, it’s almost there’s not necessarily a salary cap, but I mean, there should be honestly, it’s a whole separate conversation. But, you know, having to manage how you’re utilizing funds and who you’re giving more money to, to bring back how you’re prioritizing different positions based on the money that is in the funds that are available.“There’s just a lot more that goes into college coaching now than ever before. You have to try to retain players, like the relationship side of things, it’s so much more important because players can come and go so easily in the transfer portal. So I just think it’s a super challenging role, like it’s more challenging now than ever. And if you’re ever going to have a coach be prepared from that. I think that Tony’s in a good spot to make the move to MLB.“And then the last point I’ll make on this is just how rabid SEC fans are. And I’ve lived in SEC Country and Lexington, Kentucky and got to cover the Kentucky Wildcats and some Kentucky-Tennessee rivalry games. And like those fans have the highest of expectations. They’re intense. They know sports. They don’t have professional teams. They’re like, this is everything to them. So that’s also kind of a similar culture in terms of the expectation of the fans, is that their success and that they’re doing things in a professional way like this isn’t just like rinky dink college sports.“So that also kind of struck me as something comparable is the fact that those are our areas and fan bases and parts of the country that take college sports extremely seriously, which is a little bit different than at least what I experience in the Bay getting to cover the Cals and the Stanfords at least in the current era where it feels like professional sports are really dominating. It’s a little bit different in the South and parts of the SEC and even ACC country.“So I’m excited. I’m excited to see what he can do. And I just think there does need to be some perspective that he’s been through some stuff and his accomplishments that have come at the collegiate level have not come easy. So yeah, I’m excited to see what he can do. And it was great getting to chat with him at Giants media day. A lot of positive energy.“We had to do a commercial where we had to do some acting. So I’ll let you guys just kind of have it be a tease for what you’re going to see. He did it in like one or two takes. Actually. He did it pretty well. But we were both dying laughing the whole time. He seems great as well to work with from a media perspective. So I’m just super excited. The acting maybe needs a little work, but, you know, we can work with it.”Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast

Why host Kylen Mills is excited to join NBC Sports Bay Area’s Giants coverage

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