Al Michaels (Wikipedia)
Is it time for Al Michaels to finally hit the showers? According to numerous reports, it may very well be as NBC Sports does not seem to want him to announce their events any longer and has not offered him the opportunity to broadcast any of its three upcoming NFL football playoff games.
Al Michaels himself was surprised by the news. When asked by the New York Post about it he answered, “It’s in my deal. Where are you hearing that from? That’s part of my deal. Are you hearing something that I’m not hearing?”
Al Michaels had already been benched by NBC and was no longer a starter, broadcasting regularly. But now, it seems, NBC may be enacting the broadcasting version of relegating a player to assignment: the beautiful way in which Major League Baseball (MLB) describes when a player is no longer wanted on a team, but they do not know what to do with him.
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At 79, Al Michaels has more than five decades of experience under his belt. He called MLB games for years on ABC, including the game during the 1989 World Series when an earthquake hit San Francisco just before the start of its third game. Michaels was lauded at the time for his composure and elegance on air after the quake hit while the stadium was filled with tens of thousands of people.
He then made the seamless transition to broadcasting NFL games on the ABC network’s Monday Night Football (MNF), when that was the only NFL game played in primetime. Al Machels succeeded the legendary broadcaster Howard Cossel in that role.
When MNF broadcasting rights were acquired by the rival NBC network and the games shifted to Sunday nights Al Michaels switched teams as it were so he could continue to broadcast the NFL.
Unfortunately, ratings plummeted and viewers complained that he had gotten bored and tired on the air. So NBC chose not to bring Al Michaels back after his 40 year career broadcasting such events.
This year saw Michaels relegated to the weaker live stream Thursday Night Football Games offered by Amazon.
Al Michaels is an iconic American television play-by-play sportscaster who has been a fixture in sports broadcasting for over five decades. Born in 1944 in Brooklyn to a Jewish family, Michaels began his career in the early 1970s and quickly rose through the ranks, becoming one of the most recognizable voices in sports.
Al Michaels became a sportscasting legend when he covered the historic 1980 victory of the U.S. Olympic Ice Hockey Team over the Russians shouting spontaneously, “Do you believe in miracles? YES!”
Unfortunately, Al Michaels seems to have fallen into the category of professionals who did not know when it was time to go and so bowed out gracefully. His predecessor Howard Cossel knew it when the time came. So did some of the greats Michaels covered like Troy Aickman and Ken Griffey Jr. If he is not careful Michaels might be remembered more like Muhamed Ali and Larry Holmes – who each fought at least one fight too many – or like MLB player Rickey Henderson or NFL player Jerry Rice or even Bo Jackson who played both sports.
