The Falcons and the Georgia Dome are on TV on Sunday night. The New England Patriots share the playbill. Giving down, distance and subtext for NBC will be Al Michaels, 68, who has been doing these showcase games for 27 years between Monday nights on ABC and Sunday nights with his current employer. This season he will surpass Frank Gifford for time served in the prime-time booth.
This is Michaels’ 15th visit to Atlanta for a night engagement, his appearances casting light on some of the best and worst of the franchise. (And he didn’t even do the 2007 “Monday Night Football” loss to New Orleans, the infamous Bobby Petrino-I-promise-I’ll-stay game).
Before kickoff, a conversation with the Hall of Fame, seven-time Emmy-winning broadcaster who still believes in miracles.
Q: So, memorable nights in Atlanta? What comes to mind?
A: I remember the lowest-rated Monday night game in God I don't know how many years. That was obviously pre-flex schedule. It was what it was, and you had to live with it.
Last game of season, 1999, I think.
Q: Remember your first one? A 41-3 49ers win in 1992. A classic matchup of quarterbacks between Steve Young and the combination of Billy Joe Tolliver and Wade Wilson. Classic coaching duel, too, between George Seifert and Jerry Glanville.
The 41-3 games, those are always fun to do. That’s when you wanted a weather delay (not, as was the case this year, in the highly anticipated San Francisco-Seattle game). But with a dome that wasn’t to be.
Q: Do you see (Tom Brady-Matt Ryan) being a little more intriguing than Young-Tolliver?
A: It better be. This is a pretty interesting game when you look at it. The Patriots are fortunate to be 3-0, and the Falcons are unfortunate to be 1-2.
I look at this league, and the difference between 1-2 and 3-0 is razor-thin. So many of these games are determined at the end. That’s probably at the core of why people love it because you just don’t know. To me it is heightened drama every week in the NFL. It has increased in all the years I’ve done it.
Q: These Falcons have become much more consistent. How much has their national profile increased the last couple of years?
A: What it amounts to, the Falcons are one of those on-the-cusp teams.
I’ve always kind of linked Ryan with (Baltimore’s Joe) Flacco. They were always just right there. They were the next echelon of quarterbacks. Who was going to have the breakthrough? And it was Flacco last year.
Matt’s a star, there is no question about it. If (the Falcons) were the Ravens of last year and did what the Ravens did, of course your profile gets stronger.
Sometimes they are good — Michael Vick is there, they have the Super Bowl year in the late 1990s — in those times the profile is higher. Then the profile goes down a little bit. Then it kind of comes back a little bit.
The Falcons have what I’d call an undulating graph in terms of national profile.
Q: Since getting your release from ABC in 2006 — traded to NBC, the story goes for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit — who's had the better career? You or the cartoon character? (Note: When ABC released Michaels from his contract, the network gained several concessions from NBC. A minor one was the return of the rabbit character originally drawn by Walt Disney himself.)
A: Truth be told, it made for a great story. It had nothing to do with me going there. This happened at the end of the day when the deal was totally done.
All of a sudden this became like a joke. Let’s throw this out there. It was on the front page of the Los Angeles Times the next day, and I thought, hey, this is a great legacy for my grandchildren to know I got dealt for this rabbit.
Q: Did you thank Oswald in any of your Hall of Fame acceptance speeches?
A: Not yet, but I'm doing a book, and it will be in the book. Trust me.
Q: You've had more than a few awards thrown your way lately. I'd imagine one of the more meaningful ones had to be this year's induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.
A: Oh, yeah.
Another guy who got an award that night is a man who is long deceased by the name of Philo Farnsworth (whose inventions led directly to the first television).
His descendants got up and accepted the award, and I got up to accept my award following them. I said I just want to say to the Farnsworth family I cannot tell you how much I appreciate what your father and your grandfather did. Because if he hadn’t have done it, I would probably tonight be at my retirement dinner at the State Farm Insurance office in San Bernardino. I want to thank Philo Farnsworth.
Q: You have been involved in so many memorable broadcasts, how do you, with all that in the past, maintain a level of enthusiasm for a Sunday night game in (late September)?
A: I remember Curt Gowdy, who I loved and who was a mentor to me when I was young telling me, 'Hey, kid, you're going to be good, never get jaded.' And I hear those words from Curt in my head.
Q: You going to do the game when they open the new stadium here in 2017?
I hope to be around when they open a new stadium in my hometown of Los Angeles because I’d like to be able to do one … game in L.A. before I retire. Funny, Atlanta’s been through a number of stadiums, and we have none.
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