Al Michaels is a TV sports commentator who works as a play-by-play announcer for Thursday Night Football. He also works as Emeritus for NBC Sports.
He has been active in network sports broadcasting since 1971. He was with American Broadcasting Company (ABC) Sports for almost 30 years from 1976 to 2006.
He is known for calling National Football League games such as ABC Monday Night Football (1986–2005) and NBC Sunday Night Football (2006 to 2021).
Greg LeMond and Eric Heiden, along with Michaels, were the commentators for various events at the 1984 Summer Olympics and many other Olympic Games and Olympic Trials.
Where did Al Michaels go?
Al Michaels was not at NBC’s first NFL regular-season game of 2022. He called his last game, Super Bowl 56, in February and said he will permanently quit his job on May 24, 2022.
It is said that he will no longer be a part of Sunday Night Football because he has agreed to join Amazon’s Thursday Night Football which will begin in week 2.
Thanks to an 11-year rights deal, Amazon will be the first streaming service to offer a weekly NFL show only available there. Deadline announced that a total of 15 regular-season games will be streamed.
The report was confirmed on March 23, 2022 by Sports Business reporter Darren Rovell on Twitter. He wrote, “Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit will be the announcers for Thursday Night Football.”
According to sportingnews.com, Mike Tirico is the new play-by-play announcer for Sunday Night Football. He will be working with Cris Collinsworth and newly hired sideline reporter Melissa Stark.
Al and John Madden co-hosted Sunday Night Football from August 6, 2006 to April 15, 2009. On February 1, 2009, he called Super Bowl XLIII for NBC. It was his eighth game as a play-by-play announcer and his first Super Bowl.
He is the third person, after Dick Enberg and Curt Gowdy, to ever do play-by-play for an NBC Super Bowl show.
Has Al Michaels Quit His Job As Play-by-Play Announcer?
No, Al Michaels hasn’t stopped being a sports reporter, but he has left his job as the play-by-play announcer for Sunday Night Football.
According to NBC, he would still name at least one NFL playoff game for her in a “retired” role.
He also thanked the folks at NBCUniversal and Pete Bevacqua, head of NBC Sports, for their help with the implementation.
He is now ready for his new job as the play-by-play announcer for Thursday Night Football. He can speak on and participate in NBC’s coverage of the Olympics and the NFL Playoffs.
In 2016 he was responsible for Thursday Night Football for the first time. This was part of a deal that saw NBC do some Thursday night games for NFL Network while also showing some games on NBC.
What happened to Al Michaels on Sunday Night Football?
According to sportingnews.com, 77-year-old Al Michaels became one of the most sought-after broadcasters after his contract with NBC ended in February. This came after NBC reported on Super Bowl 56.
In early March, rumors circulated that Michaels was in a deal with Amazon Prime Video to be the play-by-play announcer for the streaming service’s exclusive coverage of “Thursday Night Football” beginning in the 2022 season.
The NFL later made it official that Kirk Herbstreit and Al Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football” would lend their voices.
In Week 3 of the 2022 NFL preseason, Michaels and Herbstreit scheduled a Thursday game between the 49ers and the Texans. This gave viewers a first look at the new show. The good news is that the show got good reviews, too.
Michaels has moved on to a new weekly project, but his fans will still be able to hear him on NBC this season.
NBC Sports executive Pete Bevacqua said: “Al has made the music for some of the best moments in the history of the sport on television. His fans and colleagues like him very much.”
How I grew up and went to school
Michaels was born to Jewish parents Jay Leonard Michaels and Lila Roginsky/Ross in Brooklyn, New York. As a child, he was a fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Michaels’ family moved to Los Angeles in 1958, the same year the Dodgers left Brooklyn. He graduated from Alexander Hamilton High School in 1962. Michaels went to Arizona State University, where he majored in radio and television and minored in journalism. He wrote about sports for ASU’s independent student newspaper, The State Press, and covered Sun Devils football, basketball, and baseball games for the campus radio station. He is also a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity.
start of work
Michaels’ first television job was with Chuck Barris Productions, where he selected the women who would star in The Dating Game. In 1967 he got his first job in sports casting. He was hired by the Los Angeles Lakers to do public relations and serve as color commentator for the team’s radio broadcasts, along with Chick Hearn, who had been doing this for a long time. But Chick Hearn didn’t like working with someone so young, so he fired him after playing just four games.
After moving to Honolulu in 1968, he returned to work as a sports anchor for KHVH-TV (now KITV), covering games for the Hawaii Islanders baseball team of the Pacific Coast League, the University of Hawaii football and basketball teams, and local high school football games . In 1969 he was named “Sportscaster of the Year” in Hawaii. In an episode of Hawaii Five-O entitled “Run, Johnny, Run” that aired January 14, 1970, Michael’s attorney played Dave Bronstein. A young Christopher Walken also appeared in this episode.
In 1971, Michaels moved to Cincinnati and began calling Major League Baseball games for the Cincinnati Reds on the radio. After the Reds won the National League Championship Series and advanced to the World Series in 1972, he helped NBC Sports cover the Classic case. He also called the ice hockey games at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan for the network.
In 1973, NBC announcer Bill Enis died of a heart attack at the age of 39 just two days before the final game of the NFL season between the Houston Oilers and the Cincinnati Bengals. Michaels was brought into the dressing room along with Dave Kocourek to replace Enis.
In 1974 he left the Reds for a similar job with the San Francisco Giants. He also covered basketball for UCLA and provided delayed televised coverage of Bruins home games during an 88-game winning streak for Dick Enberg. He left NBC in 1974 and began naming NFL games for CBS Sports in 1975. In 1976, he worked part-time for ABC Sports, calling backup games for Monday Night Baseball. He called two no-hitters that year: one by the Pirates’ John Candelaria against Los Angeles on August 9 (for ABC) and one by the Giants’ John Montefusco against Atlanta on September 29, 1976 (for Giants Radio).
Sports on ABC (1977–2006)
Michaels landed a full-time position with ABC Sports in January 1977. In 1983, he replaced Keith Jackson as the station’s main baseball announcer. Before that, Michaels and Jackson would take turns calling the play-by-play for ABC’s World Series coverage beginning in 1979. Michaels would call the games from National League Park, and Jackson would do the same from American League Park.
Over the next 30 years, Michaels covered a wide range of sports for ABC, including major league baseball, college football (with Frank Broyles, Lee Grosscup and Ara Parseghian from 1977 to 1985, and later with Frank Gifford and Dan Dierdorf for the Sugar Bowl of 1989 to 1992), college basketball (usually with Joe B. Hall from 1987 to 1989), track and field events, horse racing (including trotters), and golf.
Michaels also covered other major events for ABC, such as the Stanley Cup Finals from 2000-2002 when he was the studio host. He was also the host of Tiger Woods’ annual Monday night specials in July or August.
At least twice, the ESPN classic comedy show has aired Cheap Seats early episodes of Michaels’ ABC career from the show Wide World of Sports.
Miracle on Ice is the main story
Two of Michael’s most famous broadcasts were the 1980 Winter Olympics medal round ice hockey game between the United States and the Soviet Union and the attempted third game of the 1989 World Series.
In 1980, the gold medal at the Olympic Winter Games went to a group of college students from the United States. The February 22nd medal round match, which contrary to popular belief did not yet guarantee the team a gold medal, was particularly interesting because it was played against a heavily favored professional team from the Soviet Union and was played in Lake Placid, New York , before a very excited pro-American audience. The media dubbed this game “The Miracle on Ice” because of the memorable coverage Michaels gave. When the USA won 4-3, Michaels said: “Do you believe in miracles? YES!” when the time is up.
Most people think that the game was shown live. In fact, CTV, which owned the rights to the game in Canada, showed it live. However, the game started at 5:05 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and ABC chose not to skip East Coast local and network news to show it live. Instead, most of it, including the entire third period, was shown during the prime-time broadcast from 8:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern Time (and with a six-and-a-half hour delay on the West Coast from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.): 30 to 11 p.m. Pacific Standard Time). Although it was taped, the game was one of the most popular shows of the 1979–1980 television season and remains the most-watched hockey game in American television history.
Michaels and his broadcast partner Ken Dryden spoke about the Olympics in the 2004 film Miracle. Although Michaels and Dryden reworked most of their commentary for the film, the final seconds of the game against the Soviet Union were shown with ABC Sports’ original 1980 commentary. Miracle director Gavin O’Connor chose to record the last 10 seconds of Michael’s original Do You Believe in Miracles? YES!” Call because he didn’t think he could make Michaels feel the way he did then. So they cleaned up the recording so the transition from the fake call to the real call was as smooth as possible.