Ebersol Hops to It to Land Michaels

The pieces are now all in place. Al Michaels will be reunited with John Madden when NBC begins televising Sunday night NFL games next season. Thursday’s announcement comes one day after ESPN said that its team for “Monday Night Football” would be Mike Tirico, Joe Theismann and Tony Kornheiser.

Michaels signed a contract with ESPN in July to be the play-by-play announcer for “MNF” but was released from that contract so he could jump to NBC.

How all this came about is an intriguing story. A cartoon character by the name of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit even had a role.

NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol, on a conference call Thursday, admitted he made a mistake by giving Michaels a deadline of late July to make up his mind between offers from NBC and ESPN. Ebersol had signed Madden in June and didn’t want to wait until the NFL season had started to complete negotiations with Michaels.

Under pressure, Michaels chose ESPN.

Then, in October, ABC “Monday Night Football” director Drew Esocoff was hired by NBC. And in late December, after Ebersol attended a Monday night game in Baltimore as a guest of ABC, “MNF” producer Fred Gaudelli was hired away as well.

It was at that point that Michaels began to think about exploring the possibility of getting out of his ESPN contract.

“My broadcast family was moving out of the house and I wanted to join them,” Michaels said on the conference call.

In a later phone conversation, Michaels said, “I knew what I was asking was extraordinary, but I made it very clear if it didn’t work out I would give 100% effort to ESPN.”

George Bodenheimer, the president of ESPN and ABC Sports, agreed to accommodate Michaels, but not without compensation from NBC.

Ebersol said that it could be worked out, as long as it didn’t involve money.

Bodenheimer sent of list of what he wanted.

The key item was cable rights to the Ryder Cup at a fair-market price. ESPN reportedly got that for $3 million per Ryder Cup. The list also included expanded Olympic highlight rights -- six minutes per show rather than six minutes per day -- and expanded highlights to other NBC sports properties.

Bodenheimer also requested a weekly “MNF” promo -- and the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

“I had never heard of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, so I called George,” Ebersol said.

He found out Oswald was a cartoon character drawn by a young animator named Walt Disney. Introduced in 1927 and released by Universal Studios, Oswald was the predecessor to Mickey Mouse. And Universal -- whose parent is now NBC Universal -- still owned the rights to Oswald.

When Ebersol called Ron Meyer, the president of Universal, Meyer told him he had already heard from Bob Iger, the head of Disney, and knew why he was calling.

Now the Walt Disney Co., which owns ESPN, has the rights to Oswald and can reunite him with Mickey.

“Just think,” Michaels said, “someday I might be in a trivia question with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.”

Collinsworth Domino Falls

The hiring of Michaels means that Cris Collinsworth won’t get to try his hand at play-by-play after all.

Ebersol said that he was all set to pair Collinsworth with Madden on Sunday night NFL games next season.

“We wanted to do something different and put two analysts in the booth,” Ebersol said. “It would have been a whole new way of doing play-by-play.”

Collinsworth might not have been a play-by-play announcer in the strictest sense, but he would have handled the nuts and bolts.

Collinsworth and Madden did four rehearsal games during the regular season in November and December, then a final rehearsal on Jan. 14, during the playoff game between Denver and New England.

It took place in Pleasanton, Calif., where Madden lives.

“It was one of the most interesting and fantastic telecasts I’ve ever watched,” Ebersol said. “There was a total audience of 15 to 20 of us who were there. We were all blown away.”

Mike McCarley, the head of NBC Sports publicity, was among those there, and he told Ebersol he was getting calls on his cellphone from writers asking about a report that Michaels was going to try to get out of the contract he had signed with ESPN so he could sign with NBC.

“That was the first I had heard anything like that,” Ebersol said. “I had not had any conversations with Al.”

However, Ebersol thought there might be something to it.

So on the private corporate jet taking most of the group back to New York that night, Ebersol told Collinsworth what he’d heard about Michaels possibly still coming to NBC. And Ebersol asked Collinsworth what he thought about working in the studio with Bob Costas.

“Cris told me that he coaches his kids’ teams, and that he believes in the team concept,” Ebersol said. “He said he’d do whatever is best for the team, and if we wanted him to go back to the studio, that was fine with him.”

Collinsworth was originally hired by NBC to be a studio analyst.

“You won’t find a finer, less egotistical person in the industry -- not just sports television, but the entire television industry,” Ebersol said.