Carrie Underwood and the producers of “Sunday Night Football” lift the curtain on this year's “very different” show and reveal how the singer replaced Faith Hill and Pink (exclusive)

Have you been waiting all day for Sunday evening?

The anthem by Carrie Underwood, with which NBC's Football on Sunday evening The show is a staple in more than 20 million households every week. It delights the Grammy-winning singer and new American Idol Judge, to be part of such a beloved American tradition.

“Growing up, we didn't have cable or anything, so we watched whatever was on TV. Luckily, there was a lot of football on Sundays,” Underwood told Yahoo Entertainment.

Underwood was the face of Football on Sunday evening since 2013, and although she initially turned down the offer nearly two decades ago — more on that later — she said she jumped at the opportunity when she did, “it worked out exactly the way it was supposed to.” Not only is it “pretty awesome to be part of the biggest show on television,” but it also earns her some brownie points with her two sons, ages 9 and 5.

“They love seeing me on TV. But even with younger children who obviously haven’t seen me on TV, American Idol or at the beginning of my career, to some children, [SNF] is what they know me from,” she laughed. “So I'll take it. It's really amazing.”

SNSF has been the number one primetime television show for 13 years in a row, so the pressure is on to get better every year. The upcoming season is no exception.

“I think they do a great job year after year of reinventing the Open and breathing new life into it,” Underwood said. “People know it's very comforting to watch the Open and have a rough idea of ​​what it's going to feel like. But the way they approach it every year and do everything they can to keep it fresh is really cool.”

For NBC, too, it is of utmost importance to keep the show fresh. Underwood and the SNSF Ahead of its September 8 debut, the production team spoke to Yahoo Entertainment about how the show has evolved from its beginnings in 2006 to its current dominance.

Underwood initially missed the opportunity

When SNSF On the record released in 2006, it was Pink who provoked Joan Jett's “I Hate Myself For Loving You”.

“I've always been a huge Joan Jett fan. I don't know if it was the first song I heard, but I started listening [to it] and came up with the line 'Waiting all day for Sunday Night,'” Fred Gaudelli, executive producer of NBC's NFL coverage, told Yahoo. No offense to Pink, who Gaudelli said was “fantastic,” but his “first choice was Carrie Underwood” to sing the opener.

“We contacted Carrie, but she wasn't really interested,” recalls Gaudelli. Underwood, who is currently finishing the fourth season of American Idol, said: “There was so much going on in my life at that time. It wasn't the right time.”

Pink accepted, but due to scheduling issues, the job was only for one season. Gaudelli was offered to Faith Hill and she quickly accepted.

“You choose this person to open your show every week, so you want someone who is popular. You also want someone who you are confident is not going to do anything that could, let's say, damage the reputation of the show. Whether it was Faith, Pink or Carrie, I always had a good feeling about them that we would never have any problems,” he explained. “They're not going to be in the news for some unsavory reason. So that's part of it. But you really want to have someone that you can proudly say, Hey, this person is a big star and they've decided to open our show weekly. And that's really what I was looking for.”

Hill played the Open for six years. “Then [she] felt she had taken it as far as she could,” Gaudelli recalled. “She said, 'I think it would be better if you changed horses.'”

NBC offered Underwood a second opportunity to star.

“I said, 'Look, we're the number one show on primetime television. It airs to over 20 million people every week.' [Carrie’s] a football fan, I think it's a kind of natural [choice]said Gaudelli. “I showed her the demographic breakdown and when it was done she said, 'You know what? You're right. We should do this.' And that started a campaign that has now lasted 12 years.”

Underwood's take on the show

“Waiting All Day for Sunday Night” was the show's motto until 2015, when the team changed things up. Underwood brought producer Chris DeStefano on board and they came up with “a couple different” versions of the motto, he told Yahoo. They did “Oh, Sunday Night,” which ran for two seasons before “Game On” premiered in 2018. But they finally returned to the Jett spinoff in 2019.

DeStefano said Underwood was the reason everything worked on all the different versions: “I think hearing the beginning is one thing, but then when you hear the beginning and Carrie's voice comes in, that's the magic, right?”

Tripp Dixon, creative director and vice president of NBC Sports, praised how Underwood “becomes a collaborator early on” and “stays close to the subject.”

“We went to one of her concerts last year and she played drums on one of her songs and I thought, I want to steal that idea. She's such a pro, she took a week last year to learn the drum solo,” he said. “She doesn't want it to seem artificial and I think she was a great collaborator in that respect.”

This also applies to the wardrobe.

“Carrie and her stylist play a big role in this because she wants to change things up every year and look a little different,” explained Gaudelli. “We've never really had any creative differences.”

Underwood said she gets “a color scheme” and goes from there.

“When we try on things, we want to coordinate with what's going on around me. But at the end of the day, they always let me pick what I want to wear. Nobody had a problem with what we picked,” she said. “We always have to be careful not to be too team-specific. So if I were to wear blue and orange, it would look like [I’m] a Broncos fan. We try to stay away from that kind of stuff and stay neutral – but that's difficult because every color is taken! We try to keep it so that no one thinks I support a particular team.”

For the sake of completeness, it should be mentioned that although Underwood grew up as a Cowboys fan in Oklahoma, he is not loyal to any particular team.

This year's Open will be turned upside down

Rob Hyland, who is entering his third season as coordinating producer of SNSFsaid this year’s Open was “by far my favorite tournament.”

“The music is completely different. We basically turned the song on its head,” he told Yahoo. “The song now starts with the chorus that we were always working towards.”

Dixon said this gave them the opportunity to create something new visually.

“Instead of just showing this glamorous spectacle, this highly polished piece, we want to go a little behind the scenes,” he explained of the changes this year. “We'll still see Carrie in concert. But we want to make it feel like she's with us on this national road show, this unique phenomenon that Football on Sunday evening. Let's take her with us, we're always on the road, moving from venue to venue. I think the only thing we really haven't done yet is add Carrie to the group.”

Underwood also loves the new energy.

“There's a lot of movement and moving from one environment to another,” she said. “It's exciting.”

Hyland wants viewers to feel like they are traveling from city to city on a magic carpet every week.

“Every year you want that opening to be a sign that a big event is about to begin. The opening sequence when Carrie Underwood brings you on the air and the home team and the star player or players come out is very special,” he said. “This year's opening will make you feel that, maybe even with more energy than any other year we've ever had the privilege of having Carrie as a part of this show.”

Football on Sunday evening begins September 8 at 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC.