Carrie Underwood, 'Sunday Night Football' producers lift the lid on this year's 'very different' show open and how the singer took over for Faith Hill, Pink (exclusive)

Have you been "Waiting All Day for Sunday Night?"

The Carrie Underwood anthem that kicks off NBC's Sunday Night Football broadcast is a staple in more than 20 million households each week. It still excites the Grammy-winning singer and new American Idol judge to be part of such a popular American tradition.

"Growing up we didn't have cable or anything like that, so whatever was on TV was what we watched. Fortunately, that was a lot of football on Sundays," Underwood told Yahoo Entertainment.

Underwood's been the face of Sunday Night Football since 2013, and even though she initially declined the offer nearly two decades ago — more on that later — she said seizing the opportunity when she did meant "it worked out exactly how it should have." Not only is it "pretty awesome to be a part of the biggest show on TV," but it also gets her some cool points with her two sons, ages 9 and 5.

"They love seeing me on TV. But even with younger kids who obviously did not see me on American Idol or early in my career, to some kiddos, [SNF] is what they know me from," she laughed. "So I'll take it. That's really amazing."

SNF has been primetime television's No. 1 show for 13 consecutive years, so with that comes some pressure to make each year bigger and better. This upcoming season is no different.

"I feel like they do such a great job year after year of reinventing and reinvigorating the open," Underwood said. "People know it's very comforting to see the open and kind of have a general idea of what it's gonna feel like. But the way that they go in every year and do what they do to keep it fresh is really cool."

Keeping the show fresh is paramount to NBC, too. Underwood and the SNF production team talked to Yahoo Entertainment ahead of its Sept. 8 debut about how the show transformed from its 2006 beginnings to its dominance today.

Carrie Underwood films the "Sunday Night Football" show open for the 2024-2025 NFL season. (Bryan Steffy/NBC Sports)

Underwood initially passed on the opportunity

When SNF launched in 2006, it was Pink who riffed off 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 went to, 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 disrespect to Pink, who Gaudelli said was "fantastic," but his "first choice was Carrie Underwood" to sing the open.

"We reached out to Carrie, she wasn't really interested," Gaudelli recalled. Underwood, who had just won Season 4 of American Idol, said "at that time in my life there was so much going on. It wasn't the right time."

Pink accepted, but only had the gig for one season due to scheduling issues. Gaudelli was pitched Faith Hill and it was a quick yes.

"You're choosing this person to open up your show every single week, so you want someone who's popular. You also want someone that you feel confident in is not going to do anything that's going to, let's say, tarnish the reputation of the show. Whether it was Faith, Pink, Carrie, I always felt good about them that we're never gonna have any issues," he explained. "They're not gonna be in the news for any unsavory reason. So that's a part of it. But you really want to have someone that you're proud to say, Hey, this person is a major star, and they've decided to open up our show on a weekly basis. And that's really what I was looking for."

Hill performed the open for six years. "Then [she] felt that she had taken it as far as she could take it," Gaudelli recalled. "She said, 'I think it'd be better if you kind of change horses.'"

NBC pitched Underwood for a second time.

"I said, ‘Look, we're the No. 1 show in primetime television. This is going to air in front of 20 million people plus every single week.’ [Carrie's] a football fan, I think it's kind of a natural [choice]," Gaudelli said. "I showed her the demographic breakdown, and once that was done, she's like, 'You know what? You're right. We should do this.' And that began a now 12-year run."

Putting Underwood's spin on the show

"Waiting All Day for Sunday Night" was the show's theme through 2015, when the team switched things up. Underwood brought on producer Chris DeStefano and they crafted a "couple different" versions of the theme, he told Yahoo. They did "Oh, Sunday Night," which ran for two seasons, before "Game On" premiered in 2018. But they ultimately returned to the Jett spin-off in 2019.

Throughout the different iterations, DeStefano said Underwood is why it all worked: "I think to hear the open is one thing, but then once you hear the open and you hear Carrie's voice come in that's the magic, right?"

Tripp Dixon, an NBC Sports creative director and VP, praised how Underwood "becomes a collaborator early" and "stays close to the narrative."

"Last year, we went to one of her concerts and she played drums on one of her songs and I'm like: I want to steal that idea. She's such a pro, she took a week just to learn the drum solo in last year's open," he said. "She doesn't want it to look fake and so I think she's been a great collaborator in that regard."

Carrie Underwood and Tripp Dixon shooting a 2024 "Sunday Night Football" open. (Bryan Steffy/NBC Sports)

That goes for wardrobe too.

"Carrie and her stylist play a big role in that because she wants to change it up every single year and look a little bit different," Gaudelli explained. "We've never really had any creative differences."

Underwood said she gets "a color scheme" and they take it from there.

"When we're trying things on, we want to coordinate with what's going on around me. But at the end of the day, they always kind of let me pick what I want to wear. Nobody has had any problems with what we've picked out," she said. "We always have to be mindful to not be too team specific. So if I was going 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 be kind of neutral — but it's hard because every color is spoken for! We try to keep it to where nobody would think I'm supporting one specific team."

For the record, despite growing up a Cowboys fan in Oklahoma, Underwood has no allegiance to one team.

Turning this year's open 'upside down'

Rob Hyland, who begins his third season as coordinating producer of SNF, said this year's open is "by far my favorite."

"The music is very different. We essentially flipped the song upside down," he explained to Yahoo. "The song now starts with the chorus, which is something we used to always build toward."

Dixon said that gave them the opportunity to do something new visually.

"Rather than just having this glam spectacle, highly polished piece, let's get behind the scenes a little bit," he explained of the changes this year. "We're still going to see Carrie in concert. But let's make it feel like she's along with us on this national road show, this singular phenomenon that is Sunday Night Football. Let's bring her along, we're always on the road going from venue to venue. I think the one thing we really hadn't done was bring Carrie into the fold."

Underwood also loves the new energy.

"There's a lot of movement and kind of switching from environment to environment," she said. "It's exciting."

Hyland wants viewers to feel like they're on this magic carpet ride each week going from city to city.

"Every year, you want this open to signal a big event is about to start. There's something really special about the opening sequence when Carrie Underwood brings you on the air and that leads to the home team running out and the star player or players," he said. "This year's open will make you feel that, perhaps with even more energy than in any year we've ever had this privilege of having Carrie as part of this show."

Sunday Night Football kicks off Sept. 8 at 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC.