As Jacksonville Jaguars kicker Riley Patterson launched the football between the uprights, the crowd in Jacksonville erupted in jubilation, a stark contrast to its palpable despondence just a short time before. The Los Angeles Chargers had established a sizable 27-0 lead in the Wild Card game but proceeded to have no answer for the Jaguars’ offense in the second half. Working in his emeritus role with NBC Sports, Al Michaels was on the call for the matchup and delivered the final call to a national audience, which subsequently received a deluge of criticism from sports fans and media pundits alike.
In fact, some people, deeming the broadcast lackluster, went so far as to suggest Michaels should step aside and retire from broadcasting altogether.
Yet Michaels, who has made a stellar career of nailing the big moments with just the right tonality and volume, saw an official throw a penalty flag following the game-winning field goal. As an experienced national play-by-play announcer, he remained patient and waited for the ruling to see if it would impact the final score.
It was a shrewd observation on his part, but the penalty, which turned out to be a defensive offside on Asante Samuel Jr. of the Chargers, was declined by Jacksonville. The game ended in a 31-30 Jaguars victory, and many fans preferred the impassioned call made by Jaguars’ radio voice Frank Frangie, sharing it across social media.
“It might have been something like, ‘A comeback for the ages for the Jaguars; a meltdown for the ages for the Chargers,’” Michaels hypothesized on his final call had there not been a penalty flag. “That’s it. I don’t go on and on. I don’t holler the game at you; I don’t scream the game at you.”
For the previous 16 seasons, Michaels had been the voice of Sunday Night Football on NBC, working with the late-John Madden and Cris Collinsworth on the prime time matchup of the night. Throughout what turned out to be his final season with NBC Sports in 2021, there was much speculation about where Michaels would end up; however, it was made obvious to him that his broadcast scenery would change.
“I was not offered the opportunity to remain on Sunday night, so we start there,” Michaels said. “This was not a move that I made; this was a move that was made for me.”
NBC Sports had chosen Mike Tirico to take over as the play-by-play announcer for Sunday Night Football, one segment of a larger broadcasting shakeup across the NFL last offseason. Michaels and Tirico had corresponded over the years at NBC, having conversations about the future of the business and collaborating on broadcasts as the play-by-play announcer and Football Night in America host, respectively.
Recognizing that Tirico is a veteran in the industry, Michaels knew he would quickly assimilate into calling Sunday Night Football full time with Cris Collinsworth – especially since Tirico had been his predecessor once before. As a result, he knew Tirico would not need unprompted advice from him regarding the new role.
“Don’t forget, Mike did 10 years of Monday Night Football,” Michaels said. “It’s not like Mike was coming into a fishbowl and he hadn’t been there before. People forget [that] I did 20 years of Monday night [and] he did the next 10. Monday Night Football is still… a major, major American television institution. Mike has had a ton of experience; it wouldn’t be like somebody brand new coming in and making a big leap.”
In March 2021, the NFL announced a new media rights agreement beginning in 2023 worth a reported $110 billion between CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC/ESPN, and Amazon Prime Video. The deal also includes increased flex scheduling for Sunday Night Football on NBC and Monday Night Football on ESPN, along with Amazon Prime Video being named the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football.
Originally, Amazon Prime Video was not supposed to begin its production of Thursday Night Football until the 2023 season; however, negotiations between the company and the league resulted in its launch being moved a year earlier. FOX Sports had been producing Thursday night football games since 2018, and the broadcast was simulcast to NFL Network and on Amazon Prime. The network raised no qualms when afforded a chance to back out of the final year of its agreement, ceding the broadcast property to Amazon Prime Video.
Amazon Prime Video officially announced the signing of Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit as its inaugural Thursday Night Football booth after months of speculation and reporting about the potential broadcast pairing. The OTT streaming service had secured the Thursday night broadcast rights for 11 years and sought to build ethos and trust with its audience while innovating on its modern platform.
A key move that piqued the interest of Michaels in joining Amazon Prime Video was when it named Fred Gaudelli as the broadcast’s executive producer. Michaels had worked with Gaudelli for the last 21 years – 5 at Monday Night Football on ABC; 18 at Sunday Night Football on NBC – and developed a rapport with him.
Due to the success of Sunday Night Football as being prime time television’s number one show for the 11th consecutive year while averaging a total audience delivery of 19.9 million viewers, Michaels was, in his own words, “surprised… that he was going to do this.”
“He’s at the very top,” Michaels said of Gaudelli, who produced his final NFL game last month in the truck but will continue in the executive producer role with Amazon Prime Video and NBC. “A lot of us in the business say, ‘Our producer; our director is the very best.’ I’ll go to war about that…. Fred is at the top of the line.”
With the broadcast team in place, Amazon Prime Video began preparing for the season by assembling shoulder programming, composing a theme song and building out hi-tech mobile broadcast units. The production felt at scale with what Michaels had departed from, and he felt confident the new endeavor in his career would be successful.
“I didn’t know what my expectations were except for the fact that I knew that with Fred in control, this was going to look big-time – and it did,” Michaels said. “I credit him with making the show look what it looked like. He did it like Sunday Night Football; he put together a crew from scratch.
“Our directors; our guys – ‘Take one;’ period; end of story; live,” Michaels said. “I have a tremendous amount of respect for the people who do this [and] I would hope the league appreciates how good television makes the National Football League look every week on all of the networks.”
According to Nielsen ratings data, Amazon Prime Video’s presentation of Thursday Night Football averaged 9.58 million viewers over its 15-game package, peaking during its first broadcast in a matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers. A particular challenge Michaels and the broadcast team faced emanated simply from broadcasting games on a Thursday.
“It’s difficult for the league to give us a compelling game every week because you can’t ask teams to play more than once a year on a Sunday-Thursday type of schedule,” Michaels said. “That’s why, for the most part, you have to do every team in the league.”
Throughout the season, Thursday Night Football had its fair share of matchups that were ostensibly not appealing to consumers because of the teams and/or the flow of the game.
Michaels had similar experiences over his time with ABC and NBC, enduring through contrasting facile and difficult stretches of games, but knew many factors were beyond his control. Just because a game fell short of expectations, however, did not mean it equated to a subpar broadcasts, as there were contests throughout the season – most notably the Los Angeles Rams’ Week 14 matchup against the Las Vegas Raiders – that were decided in the final five minutes garnering an implausible and/or unlikely denouement.
“You’re going to get some dramatic games; you’re going to get some pretty good games; you’re going to get some okay games; and you’re going to get some stiffs,” Michaels said. “….We had our share this year of games that were less than compelling, so hopefully the law of averages gets us some games that will go down to the wire.
“I don’t think anything televises like football,” Michaels said. “I think a lot of the popularity of the National Football League can be attributed to what it looks like, and I think the advent of HDTV years ago, and now 4K [and] skycams – you’re taken inside the huddle; you’re taken wherever you need to go…. I’m even amazed being inside the business of how great it looks and how amazing it is that we’re able to get the shots that we get.”
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One of the first things Al Michaels remembers in life is walking into Ebbets Field on the first-base side in the early 1950s with his father, Jay, by his side. As he marveled at the baseball field the then-Brooklyn Dodgers called home, he knew his future would somehow involve remaining around the world of sports.
His father, who initially worked as a booking agent and went on to become a television executive, taught him about the rules of the games and kept him immersed in the Dodgers, along with other local teams. He would go on to attend many more Dodgers games in his formative years, always transfixed on both the action and the broadcasters. Additionally, he would listen to baseball games from afar, including local New York Giants and New York Yankees broadcasts.
“Sports had to be a part of my life and it never wavered,” Michaels said. “It is the only thing that I ever wanted to do; I was able to do all of the things to get to the point where I was able to get into the business.”
Around the same time when Michaels attended his first Dodgers game, the team had introduced its new announcer who would go on to be known as the legendary voice of baseball, Vin Scully. In his rookie season, Scully worked with Red Barber and Connie Desmond, two established sportscasters in their own rights – and went on to broadcast the World Series three years later at the age of 25.
Working within the Dodgers organization for 66 years, Scully was a renowned figure among baseball fans at large. He was widely regarded as a master storyteller, emblematic of America’s national pastime and a recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award for his contributions to the game. Michaels followed Scully from his early days as a member of the Dodgers’ broadcast team and is someone for whom he has a profound amount of respect.
“I was unbelievably and thrillingly honored when the Dodgers asked me to come and emcee the Opening Day tribute to Vinny going into his last year,” Michaels said. “So many of the players I grew up with were there to honor him. Vinny – number one – was the guy I always strived to model myself after.”
Shortly after his graduation from Arizona State University, Michaels called Hawaii Islanders’ Minor League Baseball games, a Triple-A club then-affiliated with the Chicago White Sox. This came after a brief stint as a talent coordinator with Chuck Barris Productions where he would assist in the planning of The Dating Game, a television game show hosted by Jim Lange.
Additionally in 1967, he had worked with Chick Hearn as a broadcast assistant for the Los Angeles Lakers while also helping the team in its public relations department. After eight games (four of which he appeared on the air) though, Michael was surprised to learn that he had been fired via a phone call by Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke. He found out years later that he had only been brought on the broadcasts to help Hearn assimilate working with a partner, who eventually would turn out to be Rodney Hundley.
While many people visit Hawaii to relax and unwind, Michaels did the complete opposite, working in a variety of roles that gave him a decade’s worth of experience in the span of just three years. In addition to his role calling Islanders baseball, he announced University of Hawaii football and basketball games and high school sporting events. He also wrote a column in a weekly magazine all while appearing on television twice per day on a news station at 6 and 10 PM.
His ticket back to the continental United States came when someone at NBC had heard Michaels broadcasting during their vacation and recommended the Cincinnati Reds interview him for their open radio play-by-play announcer job. Michaels’ first major league broadcast partner was former Reds pitcher Joe Nuxhall and together, they covered Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, and “The Big Red Machine” for the next three seasons.
Early in his broadcast career, Michaels had displayed versatility and was always cognizant of opportunities to learn new information and gain new experiences. When the team qualified for the World Series in his second season, he appeared on NBC at the age of 27 alongside its national broadcast team of Tony Kubek and Curt Gowdy to call the game and provide local insight.
“I also loved Curt Gowdy when I was growing up because Curt was extremely versatile,” Michaels said. “Curt did the Super Bowl; he did the World Series; he did the Final Four and a number of other shows…. It was a great thrill for me to get to work with [him].”
Following the next season, Michaels returned to California to call games for the San Francisco Giants and also began calling men’s basketball for UCLA. In 1977, he signed with ABC Sports and became the lead play-by-play announcer for its coverage of Major League Baseball and had the opportunity to call the World Series seven additional times, two of which he alternated broadcast duties with Keith Jackson depending on the location of the game.
One of those World Series occurred in 1989 when the San Francisco Giants were playing the Oakland Athletics – and Michaels was live on the air when Game 3 was interrupted by the Loma Prieta earthquake, which registered a 6.9 on the Richter scale. For the next eight hours, Michaels broadcast live coverage of the earthquake from Candlestick Park, the home of the Giants, demonstrating his adept proficiency in adjusting the scope of coverage. He received an Emmy nomination for his abeyance of broadcasting the game itself to provide on-site news coverage, informing viewers in the San Francisco Bay Area and around the country as to what had occurred and the events that ensued.
While at the network, Michaels had the opportunity to cover a wide range of different sports, including college football, horse racing and ice hockey. In 1980, Michaels was on the broadcast team for the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid – the year when the United States upset the Soviet Union 4-3 in what was perhaps the 20th century’s most iconic moment in sports. The game was aired on tape delay and ultimately resulted in a gold medal finish for the United States when they came back to defeat Finland two days later. The victory also ended the Soviet Union’s streak of capturing four straight Olympic hockey gold medals.
Michaels affirms that his famous call, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!,” is the unequivocal highlight of his career. Years later, it was utilized in the Walt Disney Pictures movie “Miracle,” a depiction of the 1980 U.S. Men’s National Team starring Kurt Russell as former head coach Herb Brooks and Patrick O’Brien Demsey as team captain Mike Eruzione. Even without the movie though, the team remains fixed in American sports lore forever – and Michaels’ call continues to provide the bonafide soundtrack of what is perhaps its most heralded moment.
It also continues to run in the family, as his grandson, who is a freshman at the University of Wisconsin, is set to call his first women’s hockey game.
“The hockey coach at the University of Wisconsin – they’ve got a fantastic program – is Mark Johnson, who [was] one of the big heroes at Lake Placid,” Michaels said. “Everyone thinks about Eruzione and Jim Craig, but I can’t wait until Mark Johnson finds out that my grandson [is] going to be announcing one of his team’s games. I can’t believe it – it’s just unbelievable. I’m excited as hell for that to happen; I can’t tell you.
“My younger grandson plays hockey and his team went to Lake Placid about three years ago when he was 12 or 13 years old, and they wound up winning the gold medal in their group,” Michaels added. “Here’s my… grandson at Lake Placid, on the ice, taking a picture with a gold medal around his neck. You can’t make this stuff up – it’s unbelievable.”
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When Al Michaels first became aware of the job opening with Amazon Prime Video, he was not looking to reinvent the wheel, instead trying to find aspects of the broadcast on which to improve each week. After all, there is no competition from other television broadcasts in the National Football League on Thursday nights, giving Amazon Prime Video a unique chance to differentiate itself from other programming.
In persuading viewers to try streaming the game, Thursday Night Football brought on an credible and sagacious broadcast team in Michaels and Herbstreit. The commentators, joined by Kaylee Hartung as its sideline reporter, quickly developed chemistry in the broadcast booth, blending traditional perspectives and modern insights to cultivate an appealing weekly program.
Some viewers, however, were confused as to why Herbstreit was added onto these broadcasts, but the decision made complete sense to Michaels. He pointed out that more than half of the players on NFL rosters today are either in their first, second or third seasons – meaning that Herbstreit, from his time in college football, had an esoteric base of knowledge on which to provide cogent, detailed analysis.
“‘He’s seen them all,’” Michaels said he told those skeptical of the decision to hire Herbstreit. “‘He’s more up-to-date with those guys than anybody who’s been doing just the NFL.’ I think that boded well for what it was.”
As a play-by-play announcer, Michaels aims to foster a connection with the listener and accurately depict what is occurring on the field. Despite moving from linear television to an OTT streaming platform, the way in which he calls the game has remained the same. If he had changed his announcing style, Michaels says people would have questioned what he was doing and why he deviated away from what had worked for a prolonged amount of time.
“I have no idea,” Michaels said regarding changing his announcing style. “Would I bring back Dennis Miller? Well, I could do that too. Anyway, that’s what it is. People are more comfortable – I don’t want to say with a standard telecast – but if you go too far… you make it more about yourself than the game and people don’t like that.”
Over his storied career in sports media, Al Michaels has called 11 Super Bowls, most recently last year’s contest between the Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams. Several of the contests came down to key plays made in the waning moments – such as Kevin Dyson falling one-yard short of keeping the game alive in 2000 and Malcolm Butler’s interception in 2014.
“You get to the game and you don’t want to get over-excited – you just have to calm yourself down and make the week as normal as possible if you’re doing a regular game,” Michaels said. “Once you’re on the air, it’s very exciting. You know where you are; you know how many people are watching – but once you get going, it’s pretty much like the players say: You have that first contact; the play gets underway; the pregame hype is over and then you do your job.”
It was never a sporting event Michaels thought about broadcasting in his youth because the first Super Bowl was not played until 1967, the year after he graduated Arizona State University, in a matchup between the AFC’s Kansas City Chiefs and NFC’s Green Bay Packers. Over the years, the game has become “an unofficial national holiday” and usually dominates sports media coverage upon the completion of the NFL’s championship round.
Although its linear television ratings have slightly decreased over the years, partially due to viewers streaming the game, it remains, by far, the most-watched sporting event of the year in the United States.
As Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen prepare to call the action this year on FOX, the critical thing, just as it is in any other game, will be to keep viewers informed regarding all the action.
“You want to make sure that you’re right on top of everything,” Michaels said. “I’ve had a few of them that went down to the very last play of the game and you’ve got to make sure you’re on top of it. You don’t want to have a blown call on the last play of the game.”
Despite the disparity in the ratings compared to previous years on linear television and inconsistency in the appeal of the schedule, Michaels was pleased with the first season of Thursday Night Football.
He is cognizant of the challenges the broadcast has to continue to overcome in attracting viewers from a broad range of demographics and making the technology accessible en masse; however, the opportunity to be part of this avenue of innovation in sports media both excites him and keeps him motivated to perform at a high level.
“It’s intoxicating and exhilarating for me to still be a part of this and still be a part of the National Football League, which has become the king of all sports right now,” Michaels said.
“The thought of moving away from it – no, that has no appeal to me. To do what? People say, ‘Well, you can retire and play golf.’ I play enough golf….. To me, it’s not a job really; it really isn’t. It’s a source of great enjoyment for me and it keeps my brain stimulated. I’ll probably do this as long as somebody will have me and my health holds out.”
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
