With CBS shelling out $17 million a year to retain Tony Romo as its top analyst and keeping him next to Jim Nantz as the network’s No. 1 broadcast team, ESPN has been forced to go in a different direction in its pursuit of a new-look Monday Night Football broadcasting team.
Though, I didn’t expect this report to be the direction the network would go:
NEWS: ESPN plans to attempt to trade for NBC's Al Michaels to pair with Peyton Manning for Monday Night Football, The Post has learned.https://t.co/CKL9BXOTXN
— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) March 5, 2020
Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reports ESPN plans on acquiring Al Michaels from NBC Sports to front the network’s MNF booth, then team him with retired future Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning to form a new broadcast team.
Michaels has been at NBC since 2006 and has been remarkable as the top play-by-play announcer for Sunday Night Football. HOWEVER, he has 20 years of experience as the lead voice of Monday Night Football that dates back to his time at ABC. A return to MNF would be a homecoming of sorts for Michaels. And who doesn’t love a good homecoming story?
The 75-year-old broadcast giant bringing his career full circle by upgrading the Monday Night Football experience would be a treat. It’s just that there are hurdles to clear. Among them, his current contract with NBC that runs for another two years.
… And does Michaels even want to leave NBC? The guy has a great gig right now and will get another crack at calling a Super Bowl in 2022 with Super Bowl LVI being broadcast on NBC. As a reminder, ESPN does not have Super Bowl broadcast rights, and its only postseason games occur on Wild-Card Weekend. Maybe that will change after the current broadcast deal expires at the end of the 2022 season. In any case, I tip my cap to ESPN for some outside-of-the-box thinking with regards to fixing what (at times) has been a problematic broadcast in recent years.
And yet, I still can’t come to grips with the idea of trading for a broadcaster. What a concept. That simple idea is something that could really open some avenues to some different things if it can be executed. I’m admittedly a nerd when it comes to these things, but media free agency would be such a trip. What would Michaels go for on the open market? What could peak Vin Scully fetch in his heyday when he was the top voice of the NFL and MLB? Jack Buck? Marv Albert? These would be real conversations to be had. And this is some rabbit hole I’m traveling down now, so I’m going to digress before I fall in too deep.