SI

Al Michaels on His Broadcasting Future, Tom Brady’s Debut, Calling the NBA and More

Michaels says there won’t be any retirement tour when he’s done.

Jimmy Traina

Michaels is pumped up for his third year as TNF’s play-by-play caller.
Michaels is pumped up for his third year as TNF’s play-by-play caller. / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

1. Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit return for their third season calling Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night Football this week with a Bills-Dolphins Week 2 matchup.

I spoke to Michaels earlier this week to get his thoughts on Year 3 with Amazon in addition to a variety of other topics.

SI: How do you feel about where you are with Kirk Herbstreit and Amazon?

Michaels: Really good. There's a feeling of “we've done this now.” We've done roughly 35 games. There's a comfort zone here that we're in. We had Mark Teitelman as our producer last year. I think he did a hell of a job and Mark comes back. Pierre Moossa is a very underrated director. I think Kaylee [Hartung] has really come along fabulously well as the sideline reporter. I love the people that are on our shoulder programming: Ryan Fitzpatrick, Andrew Whitworth, Richard Sherman, Tony Gonzalez, Charissa Thompson. It is a great group, and we have a lot of fun. It's a very comfortable group to be with. So, all of that is terrific. The Amazon people have been extremely supportive.

In terms of the schedule this year, I'm not sure I could ask for anything more than the one they gave us because this is one that's by far the best of the three years we've been doing this. We have a lot of division matchups. I was talking to Cris Collinsworth—we went on vacation this summer with Cris and his wife Holly—and they were talking about the fact [NBC] had very few division matchups. We have a ton. And division matchups are always good. We've got some really high-profile games. I think I said when the schedule came out this spring that to me, the thing that just jumped out was the fact that in the third year of this package, to be given a Cowboys-Giants game—and I don't care how the teams are doing at any particular point—that just sings. When you tell people it's the Cowboys and Giants, they go, “Wow that's a game I probably want to see.” I’ve probably done between Sunday night and Monday night, I would think, close to 30 Cowboys-Giants games because it was always a premium game and now we have that. So that showed me that the league understands that this is a big part of the future.

They give us three very good games to start out with. This one coming up on Thursday. Aaron Rodgers in our second game against Patriots, who all of a sudden now, they're a story. Giants-Cowboys. And then you go down the line and it’s a lot of division matchups. You got Seattle-San Francisco, which has always been terrific. Rams-Niners. When they added the possibility of having multiple appearances for teams, one of the teams with multiple appearances is a team that played in the Super Bowl last year: the 49ers.

Everybody's got hat in the ring and there’s a lot of lobbying for whatever games they want, but to get the Giants-Cowboys game, Fox can't be too excited about that. That’s one of their premium games every year. We got the Bengals-Ravens later in the year. We have Green Bay-Detroit. God willing, Jordan Love is not out for the season.

It's pretty tough to beat, I gotta say. Let's put it this way. I was hoping it would be this good and it turned out to be a little bit better than I was even hoping.

SI: This is the last year of your contract with Amazon. If they come to you and they want you back and you feel good, do you want to keep doing this?

Michaels: I feel great. We signed a three-year deal and then we agreed along the way, let's see where we are and I'll see where I am. Right now, I feel great. I want to get into the season. I am living right now, Jimmy, in the present. I'm not living in the past. I'm not thinking that much about the future. I want to go week-to-week and just enjoy what I'm doing and savor it and relish it. That's where I am. My mindset is in the moment. So, as we go along down the road, I’ll know how I feel. I’ll know how they feel.

There’s a lot of simpatico with me and Vin Scully, who was a very, very good friend. Vinny did the Dodgers until he was 86 and I got to know him very, very well. We belonged to the same golf club and I spent a lot of time with Vinny, especially in his later years. We had a talk one day and I'll never forget Vinny saying to me that he'll go on as long as he enjoys it and as long as he feels that he can do it at the level that he has to do it at. That he's not diminishing, and he still feels as if he can do it the way Vin Scully always did it. I can't put it any more perfectly than that. That's exactly the way I feel right now.

SI: Because you've had a legendary career, is it important for you to go out gracefully when you do retire? Is it important to you that when it is over, you have a smooth retirement and not end up coming back, which a lot of broadcasters tend to do.

Michaels: Yes. I'm not gonna go out kicking and screaming. Or saying, “Hey I gotta stay in this to a degree.” Pat Sumerall was a great friend and when they broke up Pat and John Madden, and that was when John came to me on Monday nights in 2002, and they wanted to have the whole changeover at Fox, Pat was not ready to retire. Pat signed on to do the No. 4 or No. 5 game. That’s not me. That’s not me at all. That won't happen.

I'm gonna be very much like John Madden when it comes time. Don't forget how John signed off at the end. When I say signed off, he signed off in April, not after a last game. He just said, “it's time, it's time.” I think I'll feel that it's time. Jimmy, if I can't do it the way I have to do it, I know that my brain is there, I can call the game the way I want to and there's not enough slippage for me to say, “you know what, I can't do this.” If I feel that, then I will know–done. When I’m done, I’m done. There won’t be a No. 5 regional. There will be no retirement tour or anything. There will be none of that stuff.

SI: What did you think of Tom Brady's debut?

Michaels: Outstanding coming out of the gate. He had a nice flow with Kevin Burkhardt. I found it to be a very comfortable listen. People expecting Tom to deliver things from the Holy Grail, no. The game was not a compelling game. Tom did something that's very hard to do. He kept the audience in a blowout, and a road blowout on top of that. Some of the things that Tom talked about in the fourth quarter made me not want to hit the remote to go to another game.

I thought when he discussed how hard it was to play against a Mike Zimmer defense, he couldn’t have said it any better. Perfect. I think he had a very good sense of timing. I think for a debut, it was terrific.

SI: NBC and Peacock now have the NBA. Any interest in doing any of those games?

Michaels: No. I loved doing the NBA 20 years ago. I did it for two years. Doc Rivers was my partner one year and the great Hubie Brown, who just got into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame at 90 years old. I had a blast doing those games. I would’ve continued on when ABC had the rights, but that's when I went to NBC. I grew to really love the NBA, but Jimmy, it’s been over 20 years, so no.

SI: You mentioned John Madden a couple of times. Are you looking forward to the biopic starring Nicolas Cage as John Madden?

Michaels: [Laughs] Somebody asked me who should play me. I said Greg Kinnear. But I thought of a better one: Will Arnett. And I know Will. Will and I share a gigantic love of hockey. And the poor guy’s a Toronto Maple Leafs maniac. He’d like to win one Stanley Cup before he dies.

SI: You know who would’ve been the perfect guy to play Madden?

Michaels: John Goodman.

SI: Yes.

Michaels: Everybody said that. You need a roly-poly guy. Nicolas Cage isn’t a roly-poly guy.

SI: Goodman would've been perfect.

Michaels: Better choice.

SI: I had Kirk Herbstreit on my podcast couple of weeks ago and I did not ask Kirk about his dog and I got backlash from people. How could you not ask about Ben? So, I’ll ask you. What has it been like to have Ben around at the games?

Michaels: You know what? I'm not an animal person. Kirk brought him last year and all of a sudden, I found myself in love with that dog. He's a Golden Retriever. He's beautifully behaved. Kirk is able to bring him around and he doesn't even have him on a leash. I find him to be hysterical. One time, Kirk and I were at a hotel. We're walking out of an elevator and the dog is walking with us and the dog is leading the way around like four turns. It looked like a Grand Prix course to get to Kirk’s room, and he knew exactly where it was. The dog is smart.

I've never had a pet in my life or a vegetable, but I'll have a pet before I have a vegetable.

2. ESPN generated 20.5 million viewers in Week 1 for its Jets-Niners game. That was down from the 22.7 million viewers that tuned it for the Bills-Jets game in Week 1 last season, but that game also aired on ABC. Monday’s Jets-Niners game did not. Plus, the DirecTV customers were also shut out of this week’s game. So 20.5 million viewers is an impressive number.

On the flip side, the ManningCast in Week 1 drew 872,000 viewers. It was the least-watched ManningCast since the debut episode in 2021, which pulled 800,000 viewers.

Overall, NFL viewership for Week 1 was up 12% over Week 1 last season.

3. New York radio host Don La Greca got very mad because a reporter asked a Giants player what he thought about fans booing the team after their pathetic performance against the Vikings on Sunday. La Greca’s co-host, Michael Kay, pushed back on the take and defended the reporter. That led to a HEATED exchange between La Greca and Kay.

The “all right, your opinion is wrong” line by Kay was top-notch.

4. Here is the Week 2 edition of the best segment on sports television: Bad Beats.

5. Chris “Mad Dog” Russo went full Mad Dog on Aaron Rodgers and the Jets on Wednesday’s First Take.

6. The latest episode of SI Media With Jimmy Traina features a conversation with ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt.

Van Pelt, who just began his 10th year hosting his solo version of SportsCenter and hosts ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown, talks about the addition of Jason Kelce to the pregame show, how he helped recruit Kelce and what he expects from the future Hall of Famer.

Van Pelt also talks about his decade as a SportsCenter host, signing a new five-year contract to stay with the show and the importance of being on air right after big events.

Other topics covered with Van Pelt include Pat McAfee’s recent confrontation with media members at ESPN’s Media Day in Bristol, Conn., SVP’s frustration with a perceived ESPN-FS1 competition and the hypothetical of Inside the NBA joining ESPN.

In addition, Van Pelt tells the story of the time he accidentally said the F-word on air, talks about his weekly “Bad Beats” segment, opines on what he’d like to accomplish with his podcast and much more.

Following Van Pelt, Sal Licata from WFAN radio and SNY TV in New York joins me for our weekly “Traina Thoughts” segment. In this week’s segment, we discuss Week 1 NFL lines and season over/unders, the DirecTV-ESPN carriage dispute and getting hooked into another Sopranos rewatch.

You can listen to the SI Media With Jimmy Traina below or on Apple and Spotify.

You can also watch SI Media With Jimmy Traina on Sports Illustrated‘s YouTube channel.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: Every single year since I started writing a daily column in 2007, I post David Letterman’s opening monologue from his first show back after 9/11 on this day. For some reason, the video has been completely wiped off YouTube, but I was able to find this copy for you.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Google. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter and Instagram.

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Jimmy Traina

JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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