An intriguing report from the New York Post dropped on Thursday: ESPN “plans to attempt to acquire Al Michaels from NBC Sports.”
That presumably means the Worldwide Leader — which attempted to woo Tony Romo — hasn’t made an offer for the legendary play-by-play man who currently calls Sunday Night Football with Cris Collinsworth. And the “dream booth,” the Post’s Andrew Marchand adds, would be Michaels with Peyton Manning (I’d throw Eli Manning in with those two).
It seems like a bit of a pipe dream since Michaels has two years left on his deal with NBC.
The fun fact about all of this is … Michaels has been traded by ESPN before and it’s a great story.
Former ESPN president George Bodenheimer wrote about it in a book excerpt published in ESPN the Magazine back in 2015: when the network acquired Monday Night Football, John Madden left for SNF and Michaels wanted out of his ABC contract to join him.
So what did Disney — which owns ESPN — want in exchange for the broadcaster?
The first thing I did was call Disney CEO Bob Iger to give him the news. A couple of days later, Iger called me back.
“George,” he said, “I’d be willing to let Al Michaels go if you can get us the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from NBC.”
After a slight pause, I responded, “Who or what is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit?”
“Well, it goes back to the very beginning of Walt Disney’s career,” Iger explained. “Oswald is a revered figure at Disney, and I’d like to get him back.” …
It turns out that Oswald was a precursor to Mickey Mouse, designed personally by Walt Disney for Universal Pictures back in the 1920s — and Bob Iger knew it was important to the Disney family. Within a week, Ebersol had run the traps at NBC’s sister company, Universal, received approval, and the deal was worked out.
So … does that mean Oswald would be part of a hypothetical ESPN offer?
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