10 years in NBC NFL booth
What makes Michaels, Collinsworth click
Al Michaels was getting ready to broadcast the 1988 MLB All-Star Game in Cincinnati when a lanky Bengals wide receiver he barely knew approached and asked for a big favor. Michaels said no — so Cris Collinsworth would have to propose without a shoutout from the broadcast booth.
It turns out that summer night 30 years ago foreshadowed two successful marriages: Collinsworth and Holly Bankemper tied the knot the next year. And Collinsworth and Michaels are entering their 10th season together on “Sunday Night Football,” America’s top-rated prime-time television program for the last seven seasons.
“That’s pressure,” Michaels says, laughing. “Got to make it eight.”
The duo will get a start on that Thursday when they call their 212th game together, Falcons at defending champion Eagles in Philadelphia. (”Sunday Night” on Thursday night? No worries: Michaels and Collinsworth have also called Tuesday and Wednesday games, calling to mind this bon mot from the comic strip “Pogo”: “Friday the 13th falls on Wednesday this month.”)
These days Michaels and Collinsworth — oh, heck, let’s just call them Al and Cris; they’re on a first-name basis with America anyway — are such good pals that they share frequent dinners, play many rounds of golf and finish each other’s sentences like an old married couple. Oh, and those dinners are among the secrets to their on-air chemistry.
When their collaboration began, Cris would spend lots of time in his hotel room the night before games, boning up on teams and schemes. Al would coax him to come to dinner instead. The pitch: Prepare like mad during the week, for sure, but then let go and break bread and laugh and learn about each other.
“Al kept trying to convince me this is a show,” Cris says of “SNF.” “You know, a show! This is a conversation. This is chemistry. This is all of that. And, as usual, he was right again. And from the moment I kind of put down the notes a little bit and started going to dinner, started having a relationship that went beyond, I think, just being coworkers or whatever, and even beyond friends to where you really get to know the other guy, where you really get to understand what’s important to him, what makes him tick, what he thinks is funny.”
Here’s something they both think is funny — that cute meet in the broadcast booth before 1988’s All-Star Game. They each remember it a bit differently. Al thought Cris wanted a mention of his pending proposal on the air.
“I might have been able to pull it off for a regular game, like Cincinnati versus Philadelphia,” Al says. “But it was the All-Star Game, so that would have been a tough do.”
Cris says he actually wanted to propose on the videoboard.
“That was the best thing — Al has done a lot of amazing things for me — but if somehow I talked him into allowing me to propose to my wife on the Jumbotron, she would have definitely said no,” Cris says. “And even if she said yes, she would have hated it her entire life.”
Al says he had no control over the videoboard anyway: “So he walks in and thinks I’m running the message board? What can I tell you?”
Cris proposed after the game on a bridge over the Ohio River and counts himself lucky the ring didn’t fall in.
That night was the first time Al and Cris met in a meaningful way. Al thinks he probably met Cris when Cris played at the University of Florida from 1977 to 1980 and Al announced a few of Florida’s games, though Cris thinks they didn’t really meet until some of the earlier festivities of that All-Star weekend. Either way, they now meet America once a week during football season, except when it’s twice a week, like this week, with the Bears at the Packers on Sunday.
A rabbit, some steak and vitamins
When NBC got the rights to “Sunday Night Football” before the 2006 season, the network brought Michaels and John Madden over from ABC/ESPN, where they had been doing “Monday Night Football.” As part of the deal, Disney (owner of ABC/ESPN) got the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a cartoon character that Walt Disney created but that was by then the intellectual property of NBCUniversal.
Al says the deal was done long before Oswald — think of him as the rabbit to be named later — got added as a late throw-in at the behest of Disney CEO Bob Iger.
“Bob said, ‘The Disney family called and they said there’s this rabbit that Walt created and lost the rights to,’ ” Al says. “And we laughed about it, and I said, ‘Sure, throw that in there, too. Why not?’ So that became a story.”
Al signed a six-year deal; so did Madden. Al says during negotiations that NBC Sports honcho Dick Ebersol offered Al assurances that Cris was Madden’s heir apparent.
“If John, for some reason, couldn’t fulfill the six years, Cris was in the bullpen ready to go,” Al says. “And that was a big thing for me. … Forget about Oswald — that sealed the deal.”
Bob Costas knows Al and Cris well from his former role as host of “Football Night in America,” NBC’s pregame show. (Costas is the longtime face of NBC Sports who is in talks about leaving the network.)
“In John Madden, you had the most successful and most iconic person who has ever done that particular job,” Costas says. “But when we got ‘Sunday Night Football’ in 2006, and Cris was in the studio, we knew — Dick Ebersol knew — that Cris was John’s successor in waiting. And he had already done enough games on Fox to know that he would automatically be among the best from day one and that he had a chance to be the best.”
Now, in Costas’ estimation, Cris is football’s best color commentator. Costas also ranks Al as the best at his gig.
“Since the 1970s, Al has been at or near the peak of all network play-byplay men,” Costas says. “And I think now, for a sustained period of time, he has been the standard of maybe two generations.”
Al is 73. That’s the age Madden was when he retired.
“I’m serving him vitamins and steaks and mashed potatoes and whatever he wants,” Cris says. “I’m taking care of him for as long as possible.”
A little rascal
Al and Cris teamed up for one “SNF” game in 2008, when Madden had a night off, and they’ve been calling games regularly since 2009. How has football changed since then?
“Well, I still don’t know what a catch is,” Cris jests.
Next he cites the NFL’s new emphasis on player safety while Al cites advances in broadcast technology.
“These games look so good,” he says. “I’ve been a part of this my whole life and have watched it evolve and even I am just stunned at how beautiful it looks.”
A big change since last season is the status of legalized sports gambling. “SNF” producer Fred Gaudelli says the rights deals the networks have with the NFL contain language about gambling.
“At this point we’re going to honor the deals, and there won’t be any specific gambling messages on our air this year,” Gaudelli says. “But then again, late in the fourth quarter, I have a rascal up in the booth.”
He means Al, who has long slipped in sly references when an otherwise meaningless score would come near the end of games and tip the balance of bets.
“I’ve had a lot of fun over the years playing the role of the rascal,” Al says. “People have always perceived that announcers are not supposed to reference the point spread or over/under. And I’ll sneak in some side-door thing and people love it. Now you’re not even coming in through the side door anymore — you’re barging in through the front door.”
Wait, Bugs Bunny — not Oswald — is the rascally rabbit.
“Al doesn’t play the role of the little rascal,” Cris says. “He is the big rascal.”
Al recalls when that word entered his lexicon. He says he was interviewing Jimmy Johnson at halftime on “Monday Night Football” after Johnson’s stint coaching the Cowboys.
“And he brought up something about Jerry Jones,” Al says. “‘You know, the Cowboys owner Michael Jack — uh, I mean Jerry Jones!’ And he did that on purpose, right? This was after Jerry had had a little work done.”
Al called Johnson the next day: “And I said, ‘God almighty, thanks for doing this thing, but I can’t believe what you did.’ And Jimmy said, ‘You know, you’ve got to have a little rascal in you.’ ”
The Number One question
Turn on the TV. Listen to the timbre of Al’s voice. Hear the mirth audible in Cris’. Taken together, their voices have come to mean Big Game.
The duo has broadcast 211 games in 35 stadiums — 177 regular season, 14 preseason, 13 playoff games, four Pro Bowls and three Super Bowls.
Some Eagles fans thought Cris somehow favored the Patriots in the most recent one. Cris chalks that up as occupational hazard.
“That’s the Number One question I get in every city, people rolling down their windows as they drive by in their cars screaming out the same question: ‘Why do you hate the — blank,’ ” Cris says. “Whatever the name of their favorite team or whatever city I’m in, everybody is completely convinced that I hate not any other team, just their team.”
Al is a witness for the defense. “They think you’re rooting against their team because you’re bringing up information maybe they don’t want to hear,” he says. “So they’re really hearing the game with their hearts, not their ears.”
Here’s what Cris really doesn’t want you to hear — him laughing out loud when Al goes rascal.
“We’ve got a cough button in there where you can silence your own microphone,” he says. “I’ve about worn that thing out a few times.”
That’s the kind of camaraderie that comes with all those night-before dinners. Sometimes sideline reporter Michele Tafoya and director Drew Esocoff join them. Costas used to join sometimes too. He thinks Al’s dinner advice to Cris was right on target.
“There has to be a moment,” Costas says, “when you just kind of exhale and enjoy yourself and get yourself into a frame of mind where, ‘Yeah, millions of people are watching and I’ve got to be on my game, but at the same time I want to enjoy this.’ ”
Costas thinks viewers enjoy watching Sunday night games precisely because Al and Cris enjoy doing them.
“And that enjoyment transmits to the audience,” Costas says. “That enjoyment is almost as important as their expertise.”
And to think it all began on that summer night in Cincinnati when Al said no — and Holly said yes.