Al Michaels has seemingly been the voice of just about every significant American sports moment in the last four decades. Among other moments, he called the “Miracle On Ice” during the 1980 Winter Olympics, the San Francisco World Series earthquake in 1989, and the Malcolm Butler game-ending interception in Super Bowl 49.
So when Michaels, now age 78, says he’s not really bothered by outside criticisms, he almost certainly means it. He’s been around way too long to pay attention to random opinions of his broadcasting work.
In a recent interview with Sports Business Journal, Michaels discussed the highlights of his extended broadcasting career in a tell-all conversation. And as he enters his second season with Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime, the iconic voice had an apt response to some criticism that he sounded “low-energy” during an abysmal slate of games in 2022.
He simply doesn’t care, and he means it in a nice way.
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“Look, sometimes I’ll take some (expletive),” Michaels said. “People say, ‘He didn’t get excited enough.’ What do you want me to do? Scream, holler, yell the game? That ain’t me. That ain’t [Joe] Buck, that ain’t [Jim] Nantz. I can’t pay attention to anti-social media. We live in a country with 330 million people. And if eight people rip you on social media, I’m going, ‘huh?’ Now anybody sitting in a basement has a platform. You can’t let things like that distress you. I’ve been doing this for so long. And I wouldn’t be here at this point still doing a major package if I was doing it the wrong way.”
Indeed Michaels did face some heat for his performance last year — perhaps most notably having the worst time of his life during a Broncos-Colts stinker. But not everyone hated Michaels veering off his “Important Football Game” announcer script. If anything, with a TNF schedule that proved consistently unwatchable, some fans appreciated Michaels being honest about the garbage on their televisions.
Michaels should be better in 2023, if only because the TNF product seems better. The announcer is set to call games like Vikings-Eagles, Ravens-Bengals, and Dolphins-Jets — all immediate on-paper upgrades from last year’s offerings. All games that could potentially end up as classics.
And even if he does take some heat for not bringing “it,” I have a feeling Michaels will continue to just plug away in the booth without a bother.
