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Alan Richard Michaels (born November 12, 1944) is an American television play-by-play sportscaster for Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video and in an emeritus role for NBC Sports. He has worked on network sports television since 1971, with his most recent work being with NBC Sports after nearly three decades (1976–2006) with ABC Sports. Michaels is known for his many years calling play-by-play of National Football League (NFL) games, including ABC Monday Night Football from 1986 to 2005 and NBC Sunday Night Football from 2006 to 2021. He is also known for famous calls in other sports, including the Miracle on Ice at the 1980 Winter Olympics and the earthquake-interrupted Game 3 of the 1989 World Series.
He resumed his broadcasting career in 1968 after moving to Honolulu, where he worked as a sports anchor for KHVH-TV (now KITV) and called play-by-play for the Hawaii Islanders baseball team in the Pacific Coast League as well as the University of Hawaii's football and basketball teams and local high school football games. He was named Hawaii's 'Sportscaster of the Year' in 1969.
In 1971, Michaels moved to Cincinnati, where he became the radio play-by-play announcer for the Cincinnati Reds of Major League Baseball. In 1972, after the Reds won the National League Championship Series and advanced to the World Series, he helped to cover the Fall Classic for NBC Sports. He also was the network's play-by-play man for the hockey coverage at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan.
In 1974, he left the Reds for a similar position with the San Francisco Giants and also covered basketball for UCLA, replacing Dick Enberg on the Bruins' Broadcast delay telecasts of their home games, during a period when UCLA was in the midst of an 88-game winning streak. He left NBC that year and announced regional NFL games for CBS Sports in 1975. In 1976 he joined ABC Sports part-time to call the network's backup Monday Night Baseball games.
Over the next three decades, Michaels covered a wide variety of sports for ABC, including Major League Baseball, college football (working alongside the likes of Frank Broyles, Lee Grosscup, and Ara Parseghian from 1977–1985 and later, his Monday Night Football colleagues Frank Gifford and Dan Dierdorf for the Sugar Bowl from 1989 to 1992), college basketball (normally teaming with Joe B. Hall from 1987–1989), the Indianapolis 500, ice hockey, track and field events, horse racing (including the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes from 1986 to 2000), golf, boxing (such as the 1985 Marvin Hagler/Thomas Hearns fight), figure skating (working alongside Dick Button and Peggy Fleming), road cycling (Michaels in particular, provided commentary for those events at the 1984 Summer Olympics with Greg LeMond and Eric Heiden), and many events of the Olympic Games as well as the Olympic trials.
Other prominent events that Michaels covered for ABC included serving as the studio host for the Stanley Cup Finals from –. Also, he served as host for the yearly Tiger Woods Monday night specials that aired in July or August.
In 1980, a group of college ice hockey players from the United States won the gold medal at the Olympic Winter Games. The medal round match on February 22—which, contrary to popular belief, did not yet assure the team of the gold medal—was of particular interest, as it was played against a heavily favored professional squad from the Soviet Union, and was in front of an incredibly excited pro-American crowd in Lake Placid, New York. Michaels's memorable broadcast of this game, including his interjection— "Do you believe in miracles? YES!"—as time expired on the 4–3 United States victory, earned the game the media nickname of The Miracle on Ice.
Most assume that the game was broadcast live; but in reality, the game started at 5:05 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and ABC decided against pre-empting local and network news (on the East Coast) to carry the game live. Instead, most of it—including the entire third period—was broadcast within the regularly scheduled, prime-time telecast from 8:30 to 11 p.m. Eastern time. Despite being on tape, the game was one of the highest-rated programs of the 1979–80 television season and remains the most-watched ice hockey game in the history of American television.
Michaels, along with broadcasting partner Ken Dryden, recreated their Olympic commentary in the 2004 film Miracle. The closing seconds of the game against the Soviet Union used the original ABC Sports commentary from 1980. Gavin O'Connor, the director of Miracle, decided to use the last 10 seconds of Michaels's original "Do you believe in miracles? YES!" call in the film because he felt he couldn't ask him to recreate the emotion he experienced at that moment.
Michaels later recalled, "When I look back, obviously Lake Placid would be the highlight of my career. I can't think of anything that would ever top it. I can't dream up a scenario."
Michaels was only on this particular assignment because he had done one hockey game, eight years prior. The game in question was the gold medal game (the Soviet Union vs. Czechoslovakia) of the 1972 Winter Olympics (on NBC) in Sapporo, Japan. Other announcers on the ABC Sports roster such as Keith Jackson, Frank Gifford, and Howard Cosell had never done a hockey game before. Michaels recalled this during a Real Sports interview in January 2009. Michaels also apparently beat out WABC-AM and New York Islanders commentator George Michael for the assignment.[1]
Two days later, Michaels broadcast the gold medal game, in which the United States defeated Finland, closing the game out by declaring "This impossible dream comes true!"
Michaels continued as ABC's lead play-by-play announcer for their ice hockey coverage for their next two Winter Olympics, both with Dryden, the lead color commentator.
Michaels along with John Davidson would later call Games 1 and 4 of the Calgary–Los Angeles Stanley Cup playoff series in 1993 for ABC.
But with pinch-hitter Hal McRae at the plate, Moose lost his footing and uncorked a wild pitch sending George Foster, who was pinch running for Pérez, home with the pennant-clinching run and setting off a massive celebration at Riverfront Stadium.
Later that October, Michaels participated in his first ever World Series as a broadcaster, where he assisted NBC's Curt Gowdy for Games 1–2, 6, and 7 in Cincinnati. Michaels was a product of the then broadcasting policy of announcers who represented the participating teams (a process that ended following the 1976 World Series) being invited to do televised network play–by–play for the World Series.
When Donnie Moore came in to shut down the rally, there were two outs, and a runner on first base, Rich Gedman, who had been hit by a pitch. The Angels were one out from their first-ever trip to the World Series. But Dave Henderson hit a 2–2 pitch off Moore for a home run, giving the Red Sox a 6–5 lead. The Angels were able to score a run in the bottom of the ninth, pushing the game into extra innings. Moore continued to pitch for the Angels. He was able to stifle a 10th inning Red Sox rally by getting Jim Rice to ground into a double play. Nevertheless, the Red Sox were able to score off Moore in the 11th-inning via a sacrifice fly by Henderson. The Angels could not score in the bottom of the 11th and lost the game 7–6.
The defeat still left the Angels in a 3 games to 2 advantage, with two more games to play at Fenway Park. The Angels were not able to recover, losing both games by wide margins, 10–4 and 8–1. Game 7 of the 1986 ALCS ended with Calvin Schiraldi striking out Jerry Narron.
Despite the fact that ABC Sports and ESPN have been under the same corporate umbrella (The Walt Disney Company) since 1996, Michaels never served as a regular commentator for ESPN Major League Baseball. The only time that Michaels appeared in an ESPN booth of any kind was as a guest commentator on Wednesday Night Baseball in 2003 as part of ESPN's Living Legends Series. Michaels joined Gary Thorne and Joe Morgan, whom he worked with on ABC's 1989 World Series coverage and served as ABC's #2 baseball team behind Michaels, Jim Palmer and Tim McCarver in 1989, for a game at Dodger Stadium between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds.
According to Tim McCarver, when the earthquake hit, he, Michaels and Jim Palmer immediately grabbed hold of what they perceived to be the armrests. In reality, the announcers were clutching on each other's thighs and they were each left with bruises the next day. Years later (on a 1999 SportsCenter retrospective about the 1989 World Series earthquake), Michaels would boldly admit his strong belief that had the earthquake lasted much longer than 15 seconds, he would have been killed. Michaels added that the only time that he really had been scared during the earthquake was when he moved in a position which he perceived to be backward. The three announcers were sitting on a ledge with their backs turned and no bracing behind them.
There was later speculation that if Michaels won an arbitration case involving ABC, he would join CBS Sports as its lead baseball announcer. ABC following the 1989 World Series, had lost its baseball package to CBS for the next four years. Michaels had been feuding with ABC over an alleged violation of company policy. Michaels' contract with ABC was originally set to expire in late 1992. Ultimately however, ABC announced a contract extension that sources said would keep Michaels at ABC through at least the end of 1995 and would pay him at least $2.2 million annually with the potential to earn more. That would make Michaels the highest-paid sports announcer in television.
A player's strike in August 1994 would however, force the cancellation of that season's postseason, including the World Series. Then in June 1995, both ABC and NBC announced they would be dissolving The Baseball Network at the end of the 1995 season. The following month, Michaels along with Jim Palmer and Tim McCarver, called the All-Star Game from Arlington, Texas. Come that October, Michaels, Palmer, and McCarver would call Games 1–2 of the National League Division Series between the Cincinnati Reds and Los Angeles Dodgers, Game 4 of the NLDS between the Atlanta Braves and Colorado Rockies, Games 1–2 of the National League Championship Series between Atlanta and Cincinnati, and Games 1, 4–5 of the World Series between Atlanta and the Cleveland Indians.
In what would be the final out he would ever call for a baseball broadcast on ABC, Michaels yelled "Back to Georgia!" following the strikeout of Atlanta second baseman Mark Lemke by Cleveland closer José Mesa. ABC was in-line to televise a possible seventh game (since NBC was already scheduled to broadcast Game 6), however the Braves wound up clinching the world title two nights later. Game 5 of the 1995 World Series would not only prove to be the final Major League Baseball game Michaels would call (not counting a one shot appearance on MLB Network for a game between the San Francisco Giants and New York Mets on July 8, 2011), but it would also prove to be the last time a Major League Baseball game would be broadcast on ABC until the 2020 Wild Card series.
Michaels would later write in his 2014 autobiography You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television that the competition between the two networks could be so juvenile that neither ABC nor NBC wanted to promote each other's telecasts during the 1995 World Series. To give you a better idea, in the middle of Game 1, Michaels was handed a promo that read "Join us here on ABC for Game 4 in Cleveland on Wednesday night and for Game 5 if necessary, Thursday." Michaels however, would soon follow this up by saying "By the way, if you're wondering about Games 2 and 3, I can't tell you exactly where you can see them, but here's a hint: Last night, Bob Costas, Bob Uecker, and Joe Morgan NBC's were spotted in Underground Atlanta."
The trio of Michaels, Dan Dierdorf (who joined MNF the year after Michaels's first), and Frank Gifford lasted until the 1997 season when Gifford was replaced following disclosure of an extramarital affair. During the 1980s, Gifford would fill-in for Michaels on play-by-play whenever he went on baseball assignments for the League Championship Series (1986 and 1988) or World Series (1987 and 1989).
Former Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Boomer Esiason (who left after the 1999 season) replaced Gifford in 1998, and Dierdorf was dropped after that season. Unexpectedly, comedian Dennis Miller joined the cast in 2000 along with Dan Fouts. In 2002, following Miller and Fouts' departure, John Madden joined Michaels in a well-received pairing.
For the first several weeks of the 2003–2004 season, Michaels had no partner. However, Doc Rivers, a critically acclaimed analyst when he worked with Turner Sports, became available after a 1–19 start by his Orlando Magic. Rivers was hired weeks before ABC's Christmas Day season opener. He and Michaels worked that game together, one of only six they did together during the regular season (all other games Rivers worked were with Brad Nessler). During the playoffs, the team worked every single telecast, including the 2004 NBA Finals, which saw great improvement in Nielsen ratings. During the 2004 NBA Playoffs, Doc Rivers was hired by the Boston Celtics. Though Rivers continued to work games with him throughout the rest of the playoffs, ABC would have to find a new lead color commentator for the 2004–2005 season.
Early in the 2004–2005 season, ABC found a new partner for Al Michaels. Memphis Grizzlies coach Hubie Brown, a broadcasting legend with CBS, TBS, and TNT, was forced into retirement for health reasons and was soon after hired to replace Doc Rivers. He and Brown began their partnership on Christmas Day 2004, working the highly anticipated Shaquille O'Neal-Kobe Bryant game. After that game, the two did not do a game together again until March 2005. He became sporadic in NBA coverage, doing two games in early March, and then three more games in April. Brown worked every week of ABC's coverage, broadcasting some games with veteran broadcaster Mike Breen. For the 2005–2006 season, the pair were slated to remain as ABC's lead broadcast team. The duo worked that year's Christmas Day game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat and was expected to work the NBA Finals together as well. However, due to his impending departure to NBC Sports, that plan did not come to fruition.
Replacing him on The NBA on ABC was Mike Breen, who became the lead broadcaster for an over-the-air NBA package for the first time in his career. Breen worked the 2006 NBA Finals with Hubie Brown, as well as all the main games ABC broadcast that year. This gave ABC its first consistent lead broadcaster since Brad Nessler, as Breen (unlike Michaels) did games every week. To put things into proper perspective, during his two-season tenure as ABC's lead NBA broadcaster, he called just 13 of a possible 26 regular season games, with all but two games taking place from either Staples Center (where he resides) or Sacramento.
Besides his inconsistent work, Michaels (despite being initially seen as adding credibility to ABC's NBA broadcasts in contrast to his predecessor, Brad Nessler) was criticized for apparently lacking the kind of enthusiasm and confidence (for instance, Michaels initially reacted to Amar'e Stoudemire's block of Tim Duncan's shot during the 2005 playoffs by calling it a "great, great contested shot") expected of a No. 1 play-by-play voice. Barry Horn of the Dallas Morning News said that Michaels was simply "not a basketball guy". Meanwhile, Bill Simmons said during the 2005 Finals that Michaels "shows up for these games, does his job, then drives home thinking, 'Only five weeks to the NFL Hall of Fame Game, I'm almost there!'"
Another criticism that he received was that he too often found himself making tediously long-winded explanations. In return, he would tend to talk over two or three possessions in a row (which Michaels seemed to be better suited for football and baseball broadcasts, for which he's better known). The result was that he would hardly have time to comment on the action viewers were seeing because he was so hung up on a prior subplot or storyline that he felt the audience just had to know about.
In 2005, it was announced that Monday Night Football would be moving from ABC to ESPN beginning with the 2006 season, and partner John Madden announced he would be joining NBC Sports, which had acquired the rights to Sunday Night Football games. Despite speculation that Michaels might be joining NBC as well, Michaels stated that he would continue as the MNF play-by-play announcer, stating, "I feel like I'm a creature of Monday night. I'm home and I'm staying home." Plans were for Michaels to be teamed with Joe Theismann (who would be coming over from Sunday Night Football) on the Monday night telecasts.
At the time, then-ABC Television President Alex Wallau said, "For 26 years Al has played a pivotal role here at ABC Sports, and for 17 of those years he's been the face and voice synonymous with television's most successful sports franchise, Monday Night Football... It's Al's outstanding play-by-play coverage, coupled with his breadth of knowledge, experience and enthusiasm, that keep MNF fans invigorated, excited and coming back for more." also, "Al Michaels has been invaluable to the Network and we are thrilled to have him remain in our family. ... Al is the consummate professional and makes everyone around him better" said then-ABC Sports President Howard Katz; however, in the weeks leading up to Super Bowl XL, it was widely speculated that Michaels was attempting to get out of his contract with ESPN to join Madden at NBC. By this time, it was clear that NBC's Sunday Night Football would be the NFL's premier prime-time package, with ESPN's Monday Night Football relegated to secondary match-ups similar to ESPN's previous Sunday night telecasts. Michaels added fuel to the fire by refusing to state his future plans, and he couldn't "respond to rumors ... because that would become a distraction."
On February 8, 2006, ESPN announced that its Monday Night Football team would consist of Mike Tirico on play-by-play, with Theismann and Tony Kornheiser as analysts. ESPN explicitly stated that Michaels would not return to either Monday Night Football broadcasts or ABC's NBA broadcasts (on which Michaels had been lead NBA play-by-play man).
Michaels had a bemused take on the "trade". After it was noted to Michaels that the Kansas City Chiefs gave the New York Jets a draft pick as compensation for releasing coach Herman Edwards from his contract, Michaels stated, "Oswald is definitely worth more than a fourth-round draft choice. I'm going to be a trivia answer someday." In an article with the magazine Game Informer, Warren Spector, a designer on the game Epic Mickey, stated that Disney CEO Bob Iger wanted Oswald to be in the game so badly, he made this trade to get the rights of the character back.
Michaels usually ate his dinner while doing play-by-play commentary during a typical broadcast of Sunday Night Football. Michaels would have cookies and grapes during the first half and a light dinner during the second half, having his bites during commercial breaks.
On May 24, 2022, NBC announced that despite his official departure from Sunday Night Football following the 2021 season, Michaels would still call at least one NFL playoffs game for NBC under an "emeritus" role, though in December 2023 it was reported that he was cut from postseason coverage on NBC beginning with the 2023–24 NFL playoffs.
According to Michaels, ABC was in the running to purchase the broadcasting rights for the 1996 Summer Games from Atlanta. As a provision in his contract renewal with ABC back in 1992, in the event that ABC were to broadcast the Olympics again, Michaels would get to become the prime time anchor while Jim McKay would instead play an emeritus role. Ultimately though, NBC bought the rights to the Atlanta Games for $456 million, edging out ABC by $6 million.
On March 23, 2022, the NFL and Amazon announced that Michaels would become the full-time play-by-play announcer for Thursday Night Football, alongside Kirk Herbstreit, for the first year of the package airing exclusively on Amazon Prime Video and Twitch.
Throughout his tenure as the play-by-play announcer for Amazon Prime, viewers have repeatedly criticized Michaels for a perceived lack of enthusiasm during games. When asked about his experience calling Thursday night games, Michaels hinted at the suboptimal quality of the games and said, "I mean, you just can't oversell something. Do you want me to sell you a 20-year-old Mazda? That's what you're asking me to do. I can't sell you a used car."
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Al Michaels currently resides in the Brentwood neighborhood in Los Angeles. He was 21 years old when he married his wife Linda on August 27, 1966. Al and Linda have two children together, Jennifer and Steven. Steven Michaels serves as president and CEO of independent film company Asylum Entertainment in Los Angeles. Michaels is also a Los Angeles Kings season ticket holder.
Al's younger brother David is a television producer. David Michaels has produced such programs as NBC's coverage of the Olympic Games, Triple Crown, and Fox Sports Net's Beyond the Glory series.
Michaels was arrested and charged for driving under the influence on April 21, 2013. He was released after about five hours. He eventually pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of reckless driving and was sentenced to 80 hours of community service plus probation.
In 2014, Michaels released his autobiography titled You Can't Make This Up: Memories and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television, which reached The New York Times Best Seller list for nonfiction.
Brian d'Arcy James portrayed Michaels in the 2002 television movie Monday Night Mayhem. Michaels has also been lampooned on several occasions by noted impressionists, Frank Caliendo and Billy West as well as in the Family Guy episode "Mother Tucker".
Michaels was also the featured voice in HardBall III, a popular computer baseball game for PC. He was also featured, along with John Madden, in the Madden NFL series from Madden NFL 2003 to Madden NFL 09.
Michaels also appeared in two episodes of Arliss, portraying the older cousin of sports agent Arliss Michaels.
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