Tag Archives: Al Michaels

Sports analysts weigh in on debate between Obama-Lama and Rawlings Mitt Romney

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Forget about what Blitzer, Maddow and O’Reilly had to say about last night’s debate. This is a sports media site. So we asked the various announcers and analysts for their assessment.

Jon Gruden: This guy, this Mitt Romney. I’ve been watching him for years. He always has a knack for coming up with the big play. What a guy.

Chris Berman: Barack Obama-Lama couuuld gooooo alllll the wayyyyyy….WHUUUP!!…Was there a banana peel on stage?….Here comes Rawlings Mitt Romney to scoop up the ball….

Tim McCarver: In a situation like this, the challenger will try to throw off the incumbent by attacking his record in office. And that’s exactly what Mitt Romney did tonight.

Dick Vitale: Oh, oh, are you kidding me? Mitt Romney, he’s a PTP player, baby! Only Coach K could have done that better. But then there’s only one Coach K. He’s awesome, babyyyy!

Cris Collinsworth: The president was terrible. There’s no other way to put it. He was terrible.

Johnny Miller: The president choked. There’s no other way to put it. He choked.

Al Michaels (big-time Republican): That’s what I’ve been trying to tell everyone. You want another four years of that?

John McEnroe: What was Obama thinking? All he did was hit to Romney’s forehand. You’ve got to make him move. Put him on the defensive. He can’t be serious!!

Ken Harrelson (pro Romney): Youuu can put it on the booooard! a-YESSS! YESSS!

Ken Harrelson (pro Obama): (Silence)

David Feherty: The president looked as if he reached into his bag and pulled out a large slab of Silly Putty. I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds funny, so laugh.

Jack Ramsey: This was nothing like Lincoln-Douglas debates in ’58. 1858, that is. I should know. I was there with Jim Lehrer.

Lee Corso: Not so fast, Obama. Not so fast. My friends, the winner is…(Putting a Romney head on his head)…Romney! (Crowd at Al Michaels’ house roars).

Michael Strahan: Can we book Romney for Live! with Kelly and Michael? Find out what TV shows he likes.

Skip Bayless: I’ve been telling everyone this thing isn’t over. But nobody would listen to me. No. I’m telling you, it is going down to the wire.

Stephen A. Smith: I know Barack Obama. He’s a good friend of mine. I picked out the ring he brought for Michelle. But c’mon Barack, you’ve got to do better than ‘I’m going to try harder.’ What’s with that weak crap? Let me write your stuff. Skip is much tougher than Romney, and I beat him all the time.

Terry Bradshaw: Can either of these guys sing? If they are make me watch them for 90 minutes, then I want to hear some songs.

John Kruk: Another slab of ribs, please. More sauce, too.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a life-long Democrat. So my reaction would be the same as the pro-Obama Harrelson: Silence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is it possible to get too much of this NFL? Are you kidding? Finally, real games

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Remember that scene in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas where the people of Whoville stand around the tree and sing that song that I now can’t get out of my head?

That’s how I feel about the start of the NFL season.

Fah who for-aze! Fah who for-aze!

Welcome NFL, Welcome football,

Come this way! Come this way!

Ah yes, our fest begins tonight and doesn’t end until Super Sunday in February. Dallas at New York Giants on NBC and away we go.

Now more than ever before, we can’t get enough of this NFL. The networks keep feeding us more and more, as if that 48-ounce steak they once served now is a mere appetitzer.

Endless pregame shows, endless during-the-week shows on various networks, and a new slate of Thursday night games. Picture Homer Simpson sucking up a dump truck worth of doughnuts. That’s us.

“If the Cowboys play the Giants in a parking lot in March, it’s still going to be tremendous,” said NBC’s Al Michaels. “Football is king right now. The NFL is hotter than any sport than any time in the history of this country. I can’t wait to get started.”

Michaels’ partner, Cris Collinsworth, agreed.

“You can’t give people too much of it,” Collinsworth said. “Look at all the shows, look at all the websites. Look at all the radio shows. How much more people can take? As much as we want to give them they want more and more and more. I just think the interest is not waning at all no matter what happens.”

The NFL felt bullish enough to expand the Thursday night schedule on NFL Network from 8 to 13 games this year, beginning next week with Bears-Green Bay on Sept. 13.

Obviously, an extra primetime game means one less game for CBS and Fox Sports on Sunday afternoon. When you factor in bye weeks, I asked Fox Sports president Eric Shanks if he had any concerns about the inventory of good games being diminished.

Publically, the answer is no, although I’m sure Fox would have liked that Bears-Packers game.

“You can sit around and poke holes at what (NFL scheduling guru) Howard Katz and his guys do,” Shanks said. “But every year they put together a schedule that blows everyone away. It’s magic what they do. They’ve got it down to a science. It’s really hard to throw stones at the NFL right now.”

Nope, all you can do is sing its praises and ask the NFL to keep on feeding us more. And you know they will.

Fah who for-aze! Fah who for-aze!…

 

Q/A with Bob Costas: The kid now is 60; his Olympics legacy

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Feel old everyone.

Bob Costas now is 60. Yes, the NBC broadcaster turned the big 6-0 in March.

How did this happen? Wasn’t it just yesterday that Costas was this hotshot kid working NBC’s Game of the Week with Tony Kubek?

I was taken off-guard that Costas had reached such a milestone birthday. And so were others, he said.

“Yes, they’re surprised,” Costas said. “It doesn’t seem that long ago to me that the word irreverent seemed affixed to my name. ‘Irreverant newcomer.’ I went from irreverent to venerable in what seems to me like the blink of an eye.”

Age, though, seems irrelevant since the ageless Costas continues to deliver on so many different platforms. He made national news with his masterful handling of the Jerry Sandusky interview; and he’s all over the place for NBC and MLB Network, ranging from football, baseball to golf and horse racing.

Perhaps Costas is evidence that 60 is the new 40.

Next week, Costas will return to his familar role as NBC’s primetime host for the Summer Olympics. It will be his 10th Games overall for NBC, and ninth as host.

It’s an incredible run. Think about it: Given the huge ratings for the Olympics, Costas is the most watched broadcaster of this generation.

On the eve of the Olympics, I had chance to visit with Costas during a media day session in NBC.

How does it feel to turn 60?

I don’t feel any different than I did either 10 or 20 years ago. I said this before to somebody, ‘When the miles go by on the right side of the odometer, you don’t take notice. When the number of the left side clicks from 5 to 6, you do take notice.’

Yeah, I’m aware of it. I don’t feel any different than I did when I was 40. But I realize mathematically, I’m equidistant between that and 80. So the facts are the facts. I’ll keep doing this for a while, but I’m not going to be one of these people who hang on just for the sake of being on the air.

There comes a time when everybody should transition. I hope when that time comes in my place, I’ll know it before they tell me.

Nobody will accuse you of slowing down. You have a full schedule with baseball on MLB Network, Football Night in America, shows on NBC Network, other assignments, not to mention the Olympics.

One of the things that has happened to me, because I’ve been around as long as I have, and have done reasonably well, I can do things more or less on my own terms. I’m not forced to present myself in a way where someone who’s younger and trying to break in would be forced to present themselves. To get attention. To jump out of the pack.

The tone and sensibility of what I do is not that much different than it was 10 years ago when I started working at HBO. I bring that same tone and sensibility to the NBC Sports Network. That’s who I am. There are lots of people who I watch and enjoy, where I say, ‘I really like that guy. Or I like that woman. But it would be foolish for me to do it that way, And it would be foolish for them to emulate me.’

Luckily I have enough standing where I can do what do in a way where it seems true to me.

You hear so much talk about the need to reach the younger demographic. Yet so many of the top sports broadcasters are in their 60s and 70s. How do you explain that dynamic?

You have people who are well-established. They have a certain standing. You hope as you continue, you do a good job. Al Michaels is in his 60s (67). It would be foolish to say, let’s get someone who is 35 for the sake of someone who is 35. He won’t be remotely as good as Al Michaels.

How do you view your career as being defined by the Olympics the same way Jim McKay career was defined.

Even to be in same sentence as Jim McKay is a compliment. The world has changed considerably. When Jim hosted Olympics, or for that matter, Wide World of Sports, people were utterly amazed that you were getting a television transmission from Munich or Sarajevo, or wherever. The total of hours were different, the sensibility and expectations of the audience was different. There was a great sense of wonder. He was in fact, he was spanning the globe to bring you a wide world of sports of which people were not familiar.

This is a different world in which we now live. Also, a lot of what Jim did, although he did horse racing and golf, a lot of stuff he did with Wide World seemed to be related to the Olympics. So the Olympics were even more at the center of the definition of him than they are from me.

They are big thing for me. People, though, also associate me with baseball, football, and to a certain extent, basketball (from calling games in the late 90s).

What is your approach as host?

You’re looking for personal stories. You’re also looking for quirkiness too. I think any good broadcast, not just an Olympic broadcast, a good broadcast of a baseball game should have texture to it. It should have information, should have some history, should have something that’s offbeat, quirky, humorous, and where called for it should have journalism and judiciously it should also have commentary. That’s my idea. That’s my ideal. Sometimes we exactly hit that, sometimes we don’t.

How has covering the Olympics changed since your first in 1988?

I will say this, that the essence of good storytelling, and the essence of good broadcasting remains the same.  You know, there, there are a lot of things that technology has brought us, and these additional, you know, tubes of communication have brought us that are wondrous, and a lot of it is just crap.  You know, the more you broaden anything out, it’s like American Idol auditions, you let everybody audition, and you’re going to find some diamonds in the rough.  You’re also going to find people who would be lousy singing in the shower.

The essence of what’s good hasn’t changed.  The essence of how you call a ball game well, you know, there may be different camera angles, there may be different graphics, there may be ways that you can interact with social media if you’re watching it, but the way Al Michaels calls a football game is not that much different, nor should it be, because it’s perfect, than it would have been in 1970.  You know, so some of the features may be shorter because of attention span, some of where we funnel the viewership may be different, but the way in which I anchor the games, based on what they ask me to do, is not much different.

My point I think it was pretty clear, is this: that our objective, at least from a broadcaster standpoint, hasn’t changed that much.  It’s to do a good broadcast, it’s to present things well.  Now, what these additional platforms have done, is that they’ve given us opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t have existed. This isn’t an Olympic example, but I think it’s a good example, I wouldn’t expect NBC as a network to do a show like the one they do each month with me on the NBC Sports Network.  HBO did that, they were well suited to do it.  Now we come close to replicating that idea here on, on the eighth floor, that well suits the NBC Sports Network. But my objective in doing that is just the same as it would have been 20 years ago, to do a good show with good content.

 

 

McCarver on working with Kiner, Buck and Buck, and possible retirement; I’ll know when had enough

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Part 2:

It was one of the five nice days we get in Chicago: A cloudless sky with just enough of a breeze to knock the humidity out of the air.

Over breakfast on that June day, I had spent more than an hour talking to Tim McCarver. It was after 10, and I could tell he was getting antsy.

“You have to get out to the park, right?” said McCarver, who was going to be on the call for the Cubs-Boston game Wrigley Field the following night.

“Yes. I want to get some information of (Cubs pitcher) Jeff Samardzija,” he said.

I asked him: Do you still like the work?

“Not only do I like it, I think it is as important as it was 30 years ago,” McCarver said. “Yes, absolutely. You can tell when someone isn’t informed.”

Therein lies the secret of lasting 32 years in broadcasting, with the last 27 or so as baseball’s leading analyst. It all culminates next week when McCarver will receive the Ford Frick Award for excellence in broadcasting at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

Yesterday, in part 1 of my interview, I talked to McCarver about his broadcast style and how he viewed his role. Today, he reflects back on the start of his career, his broadcast partners, and at age 70, how much longer he wants to work.

Do you remember your first game?

In 1980, my first year (as a broadcaster with the Phillies) I did an inning in spring training. I went to Richie Ashburn for some some advice. He said, ‘You know, the best advice I can give you is, ‘If you don’t have anything to say, don’t say it.’

I said, ‘Is that all you have for me?’

Richie said, ‘Come to think of it, yeah.’

That’s how I got started in broadcasting.

How did you hook up with the Mets?

In ’82, the Mets called me. They wanted me to work with Ralph Kiner. I was interested, but my kids were in school and we didn’t want to move. The Mets called again after the ’82 season. By that time, (Phillies exec) Bill Giles said, ‘We’ll keep you, but we really don’t need you.’

I said, ‘I get it.’ It was time to make the move to New York.

You were with the Mets for 16 years. What was it like to work with Ralph Kiner?

Ralph and I clicked right away. Neither one of us had a lot of play-by-play experience. With our styles, it ended with me doing the bulk of the play-by-play.

The Mets teams were extraordinary. The Mets owned New York. The Yankees weren’t even on the radar until 1995. We had a lot of fun.

Ralph’s non-sequiturs were part of his charm. Gary Cohen always said, ‘He’s so comfortable in his own skin.’ That’s as accurately as you can put it.

He used to call me Jim McCarthy. One time, he said, ‘Now I turn over the play-by-play to my good friend, Ken MacArthur.’ The Mets were getting blown out that night.

I said, ‘Earlier in the evening, you referred to me as Ken MacArthur. ‘You must have been thinking of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. One of his lines was, ‘Chance favors a prepared man.’ The Mets obviously weren’t prepared tonight.’

Without missing a beat, Ralph said, ‘MacArthur also said, ‘I shall return, and so will we after this break.’ It was brilliant.

In 1985, you did your first World Series for ABC. What do you remember from that experience?

We worked the second game of the World Series in 1985. Al Michaels said to me, ‘Is it tougher to play in a World Series than announce in one?’

I said, ‘Are you kidding? Announcing is tougher. You can’t do anything about the outcome. When you’re playing, you can do something about the outcome.’

I felt it was tougher back then, and you know what, I still feel that way today.

You’ve said Michaels had a big influence on you. How so?

He taught me more about the business than any announcer I ever worked with.

I learned television from Al. I learned how to take my time, to take a step back. I learned appropriateness. If you listen to Al, his appropriateness with his remarks is incredible.

What was it like to work with Jack Buck?

He was the voice of a franchise for 48 years. Think about that. His presence was something else. Reggie Jackson used to say (Yankee Stadium public address announcer Bob Sheppard) was ‘The voice of God.’ Believe me, I’ve worked with a few voices of God in baseball, and Jack was one of them.

Then a few later, you work with his son Joe. How would you describe your relationship with him?

I knew from our first telecast Joe and I would hit it off. It’s amazing how close you become when you’re under the pressure of calling a World Series or an All-Star game. Joe found that out later.

When Kirby Puckett hit the homer (to win Game 6 of the 1991 World Series), Jack said, ‘We’ll see you tomorrow night.’ Then to be with his son 20 years later, and David Freese hits a homer in Game 6 and Joe said, ‘We’ll see you tomorrow night.”…To sit next to father and son (and hear those lines). You talk about serendipitous. Wow.

How much longer do you want to work?

I don’t have an answer to that. My contract runs through next year. I don’t know. Like anyone else, your health is paramount. I hope I’m clear enough to say, ‘I’ve had enough. This is it.’ I’m good at that. I’ll know.

You’ve been in baseball since breaking into the big leagues in 1959. After all these years, how do you view yourself: As a player or a broadcaster?

I severed that relationship (of being a player) a long time ago, the minute I entered the booth. I didn’t intentionally do it, but I did it. I realized it was a different job. I had to take on a different intensity.

I’ve been extremely lucky. I don’t take any of this for granted.

How much has the game changed?

It’s changed a bit. The players make a lot more money. But the player really hasn’t changed. He still wants to get a hit and win the game. It’s still the same.

 

 

 

 

 

 

John McEnroe, Olympics correspondent? Yep

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NBC disclosed its lineup for hosts and correspondents for the Olympics. In the no-surprise department, Bob Costas will be the prime-time host for the millionth time (actually his ninth); Al Michaels and Dan Patrick will share weekday and weekend duties; and Mary Carillo will handle the late-night duties.

However, on the list of correspondents, one name stuck out, and it wasn’t Ryan Seacrest. Rather it was John McEnroe.

The three-time Wimbledon champion as an Olympics correspondent? Now that’s interesting.

According to NBC, McEnroe will appear during NBC’s primetime show, serving as a roving reporter/analyst. He will be doing features, maybe even off-beat stuff.

Clearly, McEnroe has media ambitions beyond talking about tennis. When it was announced last week that he will be ESPN’s lead analyst for Wimbledon, he was asked if he wanted to do something else at the network. He said:

“There’s been talk about that in the past. That’s intriguing. … I’m open to suggestions.”

Obviously, McEnroe jumped at the idea of being an Olympic correspondent. If NBC can make his segments edgy and unpredictable, in keeping with the man himself, it will be a great move.