Al Michaels, who has never called a game in Los Angeles, gets his chance Saturday with Rams
The NFL’s best play-by-play man finally has a home game to cover.
In 32 consecutive years of calling the league’s No. 1 prime-time game, Al Michaels has never worked on a game in Los Angeles.
He will be in the booth Saturday night at the Coliseum when the Rams play host to Atlanta in a wild-card playoff game.
Michaels, who lives in Brentwood, did 20 years of “Monday Night Football” on ABC, and just finished his 12th of Sunday nights on NBC.
The folks who crunch numbers for him at Elias Sports Bureau compiled a list of cities in which he has called NFL games during that span. Meanwhile, he has called 49 in the New York area (29 Giants, 20 Jets), 45 in Denver, 43 in Dallas, 42 in the Bay Area (29 for 49ers, 13 for Raiders).
Michaels worked six Rams games in Anaheim, but never a Los Angeles Raiders home game. That’s because the NFL blackout rules were in effect, and if the Raiders didn’t sell out the Coliseum — which was typically the case — the game would be blacked out in the nation’s No. 2 market.
“Even if the Raiders did sell out the Coliseum, you couldn’t count on it when they made the schedule,” Michaels said.
So now Los Angeles will appear on the list along with the other places where Michaels called one game — among them Champaign, Ill., and Monterrey, Mexico.
The Coliseum is roughly 11 miles from Michaels’ home.
“I’m going to have to call my boss tomorrow,” he said, “and find out what I get for mileage.”
Follow Sam Farmer on Twitter @LATimesfarmer
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