WFAA has a rich history of sportscasting excellence. From legends like Verne Lundquist, to local stalwarts such as Dale Hansen, George Riba and Joe Trahan, WFAA has been a trusted source for local news, weather and sports for decades. During that time, those covering our local teams have never been twiddling their thumbs, as the Cowboys, Rangers, Mavericks and Stars have been a constant salvo of drama on-and-off the field, court, and ice. In addition, the PGA Tour makes two annual stops to the area, as well as a bevy of other events from bowl games to college athletics, tennis, soccer, high school sports, and minor league affiliate play. 

Mike Leslie grew up in upstate New York and caught the sports bug early. He says as young as five years old, he loved watching games — including the Dallas Cowboys, whom he fell in love with because of his father. Long before attending Hofstra University, Leslie dreamed of becoming a SportsCenter anchor. At Hofstra, he cut his teeth and began seriously chasing that goal. His career path then took him to Massachusetts and Charlotte before he ultimately landed in Dallas as a reporter for WFAA Channel 8 in 2015.

Since arriving in Dallas, Mike and his wife, Erin, have balanced careers in different cities — Mike in Dallas and Erin in Waco. They chose Waxahachie as a home, as it was a central location for both. In fact, the two even spent some time living with legendary WFAA sportscaster Dale Hansen while they got on their feet and got settled, a stay that was extended to the COVID-19 pandemic. In that time Mike says he learned a lot about the industry, as well as grew personally as he and Erin began to plan a family. Erin eventually landed a gig at CBS 11, and after several years there, decided to take some time off to help care for their two young children.

Now, just over a decade later, Mike is continuously refining his craft as a reporter, broadcaster and play-by-play announcer for Texas high school football. AVIDGOLFER sat down with Mike on a snowy afternoon in January to discuss his career, juggling family life and the never-ending stories the DFW sports landscape offers. 

Give us the Mike Leslie origin story. 

Yeah, I grew up just a little north of Albany, closer to Saratoga, in upstate New York. I went to college on Long Island at Hofstra University, and then just jumped into the business in Springfield, Massachusetts for three years. I had a cup of coffee freelancing in Boston, tried to make that a full-time gig, but it didn’t quite pop. And then I spent a year and a half in Charlotte before I came here in April of 2015, when I replaced the great George Riba after he retired. I’ve been here ever since. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost 11 years, but it has flown by.

In your previous couple of stops, what was your beat like? Were you covering NFL? Or was it a bit of everything?

Similar situation to what I do with Channel 8. It was local TV news, the ABC station in Springfield, Massachusetts covering Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins, but a lot of high school sports, a lot of local college sports. We covered UMass, but it was a lot of heavy high school sports, especially in that kind of market. It’s just kind of how it works in a smaller TV market like that. Our coverage of the pro teams was more from afar, just showing highlights for the most part. 

What was your favorite assignment before you got to Dallas?

I was able to cover the Super Bowl. I got a chance to go for the second of the two Patriots-Giants Super Bowls. I drove from Springfield, Massachusetts to Indianapolis. I was 24-years-old and I’m going to cover the Super Bowl, you know, what more do you want in life? 

Even though you grew up in New York, you grew up a Cowboys fan, didn’t you?

Yeah, that’s that is all on the strength of my father. It is entirely his fault, and my two little brothers are still diehard Cowboys fans as well to this day, and they’re always blowing me up on the text thread all through the games, no matter what’s happening. I haven’t been a Cowboys fan since I would probably say 2007. It’s been that long. So, it’s been a while since I was a fan of any of the teams that I grew up rooting for. But, I was Troy Aikman for Halloween three straight years. 

Now that you’re in Dallas, have you shared that with Troy? 

[laughs] I’ve had the chance to talk with Troy a handful of times through the years at his children’s cancer event or, you know, different stories that we’ve done about him. I’ve had a couple of opportunities to talk with them through the years, but I never told them that piece of my personal story. 

How great is it now that you’re in a major market that has all four major sports? I mean, there’s something always happening. The Cowboys always have an angle to cover, the Rangers recently won the title, the Stars seem to always be contenders and the Mavs have certainly been a huge story over the last few years.

Yeah, the only downtime that really exists in our schedule is like a little four-week pocket late June into early July. That’s when we all take vacation. It’s the only time of the year where there’s really ever nothing going on. Of course, this year it won’t be that way with the World Cup. Other than that, we are nonstop, all systems go. There’s always the chance any day that something crazy is going to pop. Just when you think it will be a slow couple of weeks, something will happen. Luka will get traded. The Cowboys hire Brian Schottenheimer, you know, whatever the case may be, something’s always going to jump up. It’s a fascinating market to work in because it is all systems go basically all the time. 

What are your favorite events to cover? Is it Stars? Is it Cowboys? Is it playoff games? What gives you the biggest rush knowing you’ll be in the building for that event? 

Honestly, my favorite day of the week, every single week, all through the fall, is Friday night. We do a high school football broadcast for WFAA. We call it Friday Night Football. 

That’s my favorite thing that I do for my job. I love doing play-by-play. That’s how and why I got into this business. It turned out that my career has taken more of a local TV news path so far in my life, but that’s the thing that gives me the most joy. It’s like a drug to me. I can’t get enough of it. Cowboys game days are a very close second. That’s also as good as it gets. Beyond that, it might be the Stars just because they are so frequently involved in really high leverage stuff. 

What about that Rangers playoff run? 

I think what gets all of our juices flowing are the games that really matter, the games that have everybody’s attention, the playoff runs, and obviously the World Series run with the Rangers was unbelievable. That was incredibly fun to cover. It was exhausting for both Joe Trahan and I, although I don’t think Joe and I would have rather been anywhere else in the world than covering all of that. But by the time he and I got to November 1st, we were both ragged because we were everywhere for that four week stretch. There was no downtime. There was no off day. It was amazing to be a part of, but it was genuinely exhausting. Those are the opportunities you have to every once in a while, sit back and remember you’re really lucky to be doing what you’re doing. 

With the high school football, is the reason you’re so passionate about that and enjoy that so much is that because it’s just the purity of the game? All we all hear when it comes to professional sports and even collegiate sports now with NIL, it is millionaires fighting with billionaires, and there’s a lot of drama involved. Where high school sports is just its purest form. 

In truth, that’s not how it began for me. The impetus to do those broadcasts wasn’t baked into the emotion of Texas high school football and just the pure greatness of Texas high school football. It was, honestly, something that is a little selfish because I wanted to get back to doing play-by-play because I love it so much. And I needed an avenue to do more of it. That 2018 season when we started doing these broadcasts was really my introduction to what Texas high school football is, and it was like … now I get it. Now I understand why. And now eight seasons into doing it, you won’t find somebody that is more enamored with Texas high school football than I am. It is everything that it has been characterized as in the movies, it is everything that people say it is, and then some. Because it does have all the things that you’re talking about in terms of sport in its purest form, and it is devoid of all of the monetary nonsense that we see even now in the collegiate level and professional level. It’s beyond anything else that you can experience in sports. 

Working at WFAA, they’ve had some very notable sportscasters over the years between Verne Lundquist, Dale Hansen, George Riba and Joe Trahan. Is there a sense of pride knowing that you’re one of the next guys in line at WFAA? 

Man, to even hear you say that sentence is hard to wrap my brain around because, yes, it is. It’s an iconic place to work and it does bend your brain a little bit when you really think about the history because you do go back through Verne Lundquist and then Dale Hansen, and you even have a guy like Bill Macatee who has gone on to do a bunch of really high-level golf coverage for CBS that used to work at WFAA. The names that have walked through that building, not just in the sports department, but on the news side as well. They are legendary names. I mean, the stories you hear about the mentality of the way things worked in that newsroom back then are really astounding. It’s wild to walk around that building and just see the history that’s on the walls. 

Your wife is in the business as well, right?

She was. She was working at Channel 11. She decided to take some time off to spend with the kids, but I met Erin in the industry back in Massachusetts. She’s a meteorologist. We met at our first TV station in Springfield almost 14 years ago. We were introduced right before I went to go cover that Super Bowl in Indianapolis. When I came back from that, she was an intern in her senior year of college. I was 24, a couple years out of school. And she came to me a week or two after I got back from that Super Bowl and said: “Hey, I’d really love to learn about, you know, doing sports and what you do on Friday nights with high school basketball. Can I come out and shoot some games with you and, you know, just hang out and see what you do?” Um, cute blonde wants to come hang out on Friday nights? Yeah, sure. Fine by me. Come to find out she knew nothing about sports, cared nothing about sports, but she just wanted to come hang out with me. It took about three weeks before we knew it was going to be something special. Here we are 14 years later, married almost eight years and two little ones. 

Is it nice to have someone that was in the business, is in the business to kind of understand, like, just the stress and just how difficult it can be? 

She’s the bedrock of our family. And the fact that she has been in the business, yeah, she knows what it is like, how crazy it can be and how demanding it can be. And that’s honestly a big part of how and why we made the decision to have her stay home was because the spring where she was pregnant with our son was the spring where we had the Mavs and the Stars both on their long postseason runs. Stars went to the West Finals again. Mavs went to the NBA Finals and those two runs happening concurrently was madness for our sports department. That was where the conversation began of how on earth are we going to do this with two kids? And it didn’t take long to realize, yeah, we’re probably not.

I guess we should talk a little golf, since it is a golf publication. I know you don’t play as much as you would like because of the two kiddos and you’re in your busy schedule, but what are some of the things you enjoy about the game of golf? We have a great golf scene here in DFW with Scottie [Scheffler] being on top of the golf world, as well as plenty of other local pros and the PGA Championship coming to Fields Ranch next year. 

It has certainly been a highlight over the last five or six years. As I’ve gotten into fatherhood, it has been more covering golf more than playing golf, because the playing golf has been, unfortunately, infrequent. But the golf in this area is unbelievable. And it’s become a situation where the golf in this area is so good that it is an international story that the best player in the world is from here, and several of the other best players in the world are from here. To be able to have two PGA Tour events right here in our backyard, the Women’s PGA Championship here last year and the PGA Championship in 2027, we are unbelievably blessed with everything that we have from a golf standpoint in this area. It makes being a golf fan in DFW about as good as it gets. 

What are some of the favorite golf courses you’ve played here in DFW? 

You know, it’s funny, the course that I probably play the most is Waxahachie Golf Club because it’s just the one that’s close by. It’s somewhere I can go get a couple rounds and some practice in. Honestly, the most fun that I’ve had is the opportunity to be able to play some of the courses in the area through work, you know, having the opportunity to play in the media Wide Open at Colonial, having the opportunity to play at the various Nelson media days at the courses that they’ve had it at through the last decade now. TPC Las Colinas (now the Nelson Sports Club), Trinity Forest and TPC Craig Ranch. Other than those, I got a chance to play Pinehurst No. 2 when they had the U.S. Open there, because I was working in Charlotte in 2014 when the USGA held the men’s and women’s U.S. Opens there. I was also able to play Quail Hollow, since they have a tour event there. We are doing a family trip to Scotland this summer, so hopefully I will be able to knock one or two off the bucket list while we’re there. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for taking the time with us, Mike. And be sure to tell us if you ever let Troy know about your Halloween costumes. 

[Laughs]. I will definitely do that.