Al Michaels is currently calling the Thursday night preseason game between the Colts and Bengals. It’s the beginning of his third season with Prime Video. Will 2024 be the last season for the legendary broadcaster?
“Right now, I feel great,” Michaels recently told Stephen Battaglio of the L.A. Times (via Sports Business Journal), and I look forward to the season. I’ve trained myself to live in the present. I don’t want to start thinking too much about the future. . . . I think maybe we’ll get to a point down the line, end of the season or whatever and sit and discuss this thing. Can I go on? Do I want to go on? Do they want me to go on? All these things will happen in due course. I’m having a lot of fun.”
Last year, Michaels committed to working in 2024, and he said, “We’ll see after that.”
If 2024 will be his final year, don’t expect Michaels to say so. He made it clear last year that there will be no farewell tour.
“Look, when I’m done, it’s the way John Madden was done,” Michaels said last year. “Two words and a contraction: ‘It’s time.’ I don’t need any parade or that nonsense.”
He deserves to go out however he wants. He’s one of the best to have ever done it, via a voice that is iconic and, for millions, the football soundtrack of their childhood and adulthood.
It’s hard to imagine watching the NFL without hearing him. Hopefully, he’ll keep going. In the end, he has earned the right to step aside whenever he wants.