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"Monday Night" Duo Divorcing
Al Michaels and John Madden's days are numbered.
Michaels, the longtime play-by-play commentator of Monday Night Football, will remain with the franchise when it relocates to EPSN in 2006, it was confirmed Tuesday.
The hire spells the end of the Michaels-Madden tandem. As announced last month, Madden, MNF's colorful color analyst, is bound for NBC and that network's soon to be Sunday Night Football. The upcoming 2005 season will be the duo's last together.
In another chess move, Bob Costas was reupped by NBC Sports through 2012, and tapped to host its Sunday Night Football pregame studio show, which like the prime-time game, will debut on the Peacock in 2006.
Michaels got a reported $4 million a year to jump to cable, in order to stay with MNF. Madden got a reported $4 million a year to jump to NBC, and move to Sunday Night Football. According to the Los Angeles Times, NBC engaged Michaels in talks, but didn't entice him with millions.
In a telephone conference call, Michaels said he followed the storied franchise, not the money. "Those three words, Monday Night Fooball. There is something magnetizing about Monday night," he said.
NBC, which put together a six-year, $3.6 billion deal to get back into the pigskin business for the first time since 1998, is betting that there will be something magnetizing about Sunday night. It is billing Sunday Night Football as "the National Football League's primetime network television package," which is true. But it's also true that since MNF's debut on ABC in 1970, it's been considered the primetime game. The only difference come 2006 is that MNF will try to be the game from the upper reaches of the cable box, where ratings generally don't surpass those of the broadcast networks. ESPN put together an eight-year, $8.8 billion deal to bet that it will.
Michaels, 61, hailed as "the industry's best play-by-play commentator" by ESPN, has staffed the MNF booth since 1986. Madden, 69, has been his partner since 2002.
On ESPN, Michaels will be paired with Joe Theismann, the sports network's current analyst on its Sunday night games. Theismann and Monday Night Football go way back. As quarterback of the Washington Redskins, Theismann used to play on it, until he broke his leg on it during a game in 1985.
There was no word on who will play "Al" to Madden's "John" on Sunday Night Football. Cris Collinsworth, meanwhile, earlier was named Costas' pregame studio cohost.
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