As lopsided NFL trades go, well, forget about Matthew Stafford for Jared Goff. In 2006—in what was largely a face-saving PR stunt—ABC allowed its lead pro football play-by-play voice, Al Michaels, to decamp to NBC in exchange for the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a precursor to Mickey Mouse created by Walt Disney in the 1920s. Since the swap, Oswald has sat on the intellectual property equivalent of the injured list.
Michaels, on the other hand, became the centerpiece for Sunday Night Football, a ratings juggernaut for NBC that, most weeks, outdraws every other show on TV. As with any sports franchise, success has plenty of parents. The show’s director (Drew Esocoff) and executive producer (Fred Gaudelli) take back seats to no one. Same for sideline reporter Michele Tafoya, who just finished her final season. The original SNF analyst, the late John Madden, may be the GOAT, but when he was replaced in 2009 by former All-Pro receiver Cris Collinsworth, ratings remained astronomical.
And yet the quarterback has been, undeniably, Michaels. He’s 77 now, but he is undiminished since he began working for ABC in the late 1970s. He marries a crisp professionalism with a teenager’s subversiveness—the Rascal, he calls his alter ego, the prank-calling sports fan. More than 40 years after Michaels famously asked about our faith in miracles at the '80 Olympics, his voice has lost none of its authority. And his sixth sense for knowing when to speak and when not to remains wondrous.
