You Can't Make This Up: Miracles, Memories, and the Perfect Marriage of Sports and Television

by Al Michaels

  Meanwhile, in one of my first meetings with Steve Bornstein, he made it clear he wasn’t a fan of Dan Dierdorf and didn’t want to renew his contract, which was up the following year. I told him I disagreed with his assessment, but he was intent on making 1998 Dan’s last season as an analyst on the show. And with Gifford now out, there was an open spot in a three-man booth—a role that would be filled by Boomer Esiason.

  Esiason had gotten to know Ken Wolfe and Craig Janoff, the producer and director of Monday Night Football, while working with them as an analyst on the World League of American Football in the early-nineties. They had stayed in contact, and with Wolfe and Janoff championing Esiason, ABC hired him to join Dan and me in the Monday Night booth in 1998. (This, by the way, all came after a major push at the time to hire John Madden for Monday Night—a deal that fell apart at the last minute.) Esiason was thirty-seven, and the year before, had gone back to Cincinnati for a second stint with the Bengals and started seven games. He could still play but with the Monday Night opportunity available, he’d decided to retire and make the jump to broadcasting.

  It was a thorny year from the start. Each week, we were coming off that dopey pregame show from Baltimore. Dan pretty much knew it was going to be his last year. Wolfe and Janoff were—as they had been for some time—dissatisfied with their contracts, and bristling at a management team, including executive producer John Filippelli, that they didn’t like or respect. And then there was Esiason in and Gifford out. In our first broadcast—a preseason game in Canton, Ohio, during Hall of Fame weekend—minutes before the game, Esiason asked me to introduce him specifically as a “Super Bowl quarterback.” I told him I thought that sounded awkward—people knew who he was. Then, when I brought him in during the scene set, he immediately proclaimed to the audience, “It’s going be a new booth, guys—look out!” Dierdorf and I glanced at each other. Ohhhh-kay.

  Dan was let go after the 1998 season—the Pro Bowl was his last game for ABC. Meanwhile, Linda and I stayed after the game in Maui for a vacation. The Broncos had just won their second straight Super Bowl, and the team’s coach, Mike Shanahan, owner Pat Bowlen, and John Elway were all staying at our hotel. One morning, I’m playing golf with Shanahan, who’d been a good friend dating back to his brief run as the Raiders’ coach a decade earlier. When I meet him at the range, he says, “Did I hear that they fired Dan and kept the other guy?” I say yes. He says, “Boy, you’re in some business.” That night, Shanahan, Bowlen, Elway, and I went to dinner with our wives at Carelli’s On The Beach. At this point, Elway still hadn’t decided whether he would retire. There were even rumors that perhaps an opening in the Monday Night Football booth would entice him to end his playing career and make the transition. At dinner, the topic came up. I asked him if anyone at ABC had contacted him. Elway laughed and said Esiason had come to him and encouraged him to try to get the job. “Come with me,” Boomer had told John, “so we can gang up on Michaels together.”

  Elway retired but passed on any broadcasting opportunities.

  Back in New York a month later, I had lunch with the new president of ABC Sports, Howard Katz, who in the 1970s had been mentored by my father at TWI. (Steve Bornstein had been promoted to the head of Disney’s Internet group.) At lunch, Howard told me he was concerned about the direction of the show. It was our Super Bowl year coming up—and I told him that after all the tumult of the past couple of years, I thought the smartest thing going forward was to avoid any more changes. I told him I felt the best option might be working with Esiason in a two-man booth. And that’s the way it went in 1999.

  We did the Super Bowl. The Rams beat the Titans in a thriller in Atlanta that came down to the final play of the game, when Rams linebacker Mike Jones tackled Kevin Dyson at the one-yard line to preserve the St. Louis victory. There would be the regular on-the-field presentations of the Lombardi Trophy and the MVP award and then from the booth, Esiason and I were going to take us off the air with a one-minute recap. But the ceremony ran long—the network wanted to get to some new show on the air that would debut as soon as we were done—and now we’d only have thirty seconds or less. Filippelli, the executive producer, was in the truck and told Wolfe to tell us that we’d only have time for me to say something briefly and take us off the air. There would be no time for Esiason, who then removed his earpiece and left the booth as I was starting the “close.” I wouldn’t see him again until our production meeting the following Saturday night in Honolulu prior to the next day’s Pro Bowl.

  By this point, Howard Katz had decided it was time for a big restructuring. And not just in the booth. Wolfe and Janoff were constantly moaning and brooding and had worn him out, too.

  WHETHER FAIR OR NOT, as the new millennium approached, there was a perception that Monday Night Football was fraying—even if the ratings said otherwise. In the so-called glory years of the show with Howard Cosell, when there was only network television and no competition from cable, MNF had generally ranked around 20th out of 54 shows. In the supposedly “flat” period, it was almost always in the top 10 out of 150 shows.

  Still, despite all that, total viewership was down simply because of the rise of cable. Instead of just two other options, CBS and NBC, as there were in the seventies, now viewers had a hundred choices. We were now competing against a whole universe of shows, from other sports programming to early-stage reality television to professional wrestling’s Monday Night RAW. And Howard Katz had a big change in mind. “What would you think,” Howard asked me, “if Don Ohlmeyer came back to produce Monday Night Football?” Katz and Ohlmeyer were very close. Howard had spent a number of years working at Don’s production company.

  I’d known Don since the 1970s. He was a disciple of Roone Arledge and had produced Monday Night Football in the early years. Don had been supportive in getting me to ABC in the first place, and then had left to run NBC Sports and then, later, NBC Entertainment. He’d made NBC megamillions by overseeing the “Must See TV” Thursday night lineup in the 1990s. Don had retired from television in 1998 at fifty-three years old. He’d been there, done that, and needed a break. But was it temporary or permanent? Even Don didn’t know at that point. We were playing golf two or three times a week and I’d never seen him happier.

  “You’re never going to be able to get Don,” I said to Katz. “He’s enjoying life too much. He’ll never do this. Don’t get me wrong. If you could, it would be great. But I just don’t see him coming back for a job he already had twenty-five years ago. I just don’t see it happening.”

  Don and I had lunch shortly after that and he told me that Howard had spoken to him about coming back. And then he surprised me.

  “I’m thinking about it,” he said. “I have some ideas that are totally out of the box, but the only way I’ll do it is if I have real autonomy.”

  Don didn’t want the increasing collection of executives and bean counters at ABC and ESPN interfering with his plans. He had big ideas, and wanted the freedom to execute them.

  “What do you have in mind?” I asked.

  “Number one, Esiason’s out. We can find any number of better analysts. But I’d also want to put someone in the booth from outside the football world. Someone who will get people talking.

  “I know one thing, though,” he continued. “If I ever did this, you’d have to buy in.”

  I told him the idea was very intriguing. This could range anywhere from sensational to a total bust.

  Sure enough, a week or so later, Don Ohlmeyer came out of retirement. That ended Wolfe’s fourteen-year run as producer. And he had the autonomy he needed to really shake things up. He sent Esiason packing and hired a new director to replace Janoff. His name was Drew Esocoff, and Don, who’d never met Esocoff, loved the way he had directed that year’s Sugar Bowl. How’d that hire turn out? Well, Drew and I have now worked together for the last fifteen seasons. Nobody today and nobody ever has done it better than Drew. Ohlmeyer always understood showmanship and had a great sense of what works and w
hat doesn’t. He knew a great director when he saw one. And he was never afraid of risks.

  However, before Don could start looking “outside the box” for a new guy in the booth, Bill Parcells resigned as the head coach of the Jets. That’s when Parcells had that famous quote—“Write it on your chalkboard, I’ll never coach again.” Of course, three years later, Jerry Jones would help Bill erase that chalkboard. Anyway, Katz, Ohlmeyer, and I figured if we could sign Parcells, we’d go with the more conventional two-man booth. Bill would bring enough to the table. He was a Jersey guy, a New York icon, and a coach who’d won two Super Bowls. I was excited at the prospect.

  Katz had dinner with Parcells on Long Island to gauge his interest in the job. Bill said he’d need some time to think about it and, among other things, had a number of questions he wanted to ask me. Over the next few days, Parcells and I had two long phone conversations. I’d known Bill over the years, through covering his teams, as a man who had a lot of answers. Now he was posing the questions. And they were all thoughtful, insightful, and thorough. He wanted to know everything about everything—how would this work, how would that work, what if we tried this, explain that dynamic to me, and so on. Bill had had a little prior broadcasting experience at NBC and understood the business. The more we talked, the more excited I became. I thought it would be a great pairing. Before we hung up on the second conversation, he said he was going to take a couple of more days to think about it. Among the things that were holding him back was the travel. He hated to fly. Also, I wasn’t completely convinced that coaching was totally out of his blood. The last thing I said to him was, “Bill, I hope you’ll do this. I think it’ll be great and we’ll have a lot of fun. But there’s one thing I have to say to you—the people who work on this show live and breathe Monday Night Football. It’s an honor to be a part of. Please don’t think of this as a halfway house between coaching jobs. If you take it, we have to know you’re all in.”

  His response was perfect. He said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do but I’ll tell you this: if I take this job, nobody will work harder and I’ll be the best who’s ever done it.” Now I really wanted him to say yes.

  But a week later, Parcells passed on the opportunity. He said he really wrestled with the decision, and that he’d gone back and forth multiple times. At that moment, I’d have bet the moon he’d be back on the sidelines at some point. That point would be 2003 in Dallas.

  WITH THE PARCELLS DALLIANCE over, it was time for Ohlmeyer to get in full gear. Don decided to replace Lesley Visser as sideline reporter with two reporters—Melissa Stark, in her mid-twenties from ESPN, and the former star running back Eric Dickerson.

  Dan Fouts, Steve Young, Nate Newton, and Tom Jackson came in to audition for the role of conventional analyst, and Fouts got the job. In short order, Dan would be in my Partners Hall of Fame. A great guy on every level and the ultimate team player. And you wouldn’t have a clue that he’d be on that short list of Greatest Quarterbacks Ever. No false modesty, either. No need to introduce him as anything other than Dan Fouts. Just Dan being Dan—always a joy to be with.

  Now it was time to concentrate on our “wild card.”

  Just as Ohlmeyer figured, he had turned this into a national parlor game. Who is going to be Monday Night Football’s new “out of the box” announcer? USA Today ran a readers’ poll with suggestions for the slate of candidates. When there was a conference call to update the media on where things stood, more than one hundred reporters called in.

  One Sunday when I was in New York, I was a guest panelist on ESPN’s The Sports Reporters and was asked who would be in my fantasy booth. The Rascal popped out and I said, “Shania Twain and Maureen Dowd.” A few days later in Los Angeles, I opened up a letter. It was a short note: “Al, sounds great to me, too—Maureen.”

  Because of the way Don Ohlmeyer went about the process, everyone was considered. Or thought they were. Don made it clear nobody in the entire country was being ruled out. A couple of radio talk show hosts and a local Los Angeles television anchor on KTLA—a Carlos Somebody—contacted Don and he told them, “Sure, we’re considering you.” Then they’d go on the air and say they were in the running for Monday Night Football. Don and I would laugh our asses off. If Don’s barber had thrown his hat in the ring, that guy would have been under consideration. We thought about telling all these guys they were only slightly behind Don’s dry cleaner on the depth chart.

  We actually did bring in Tony Kornheiser for an audition. If there was a guy in the media at that time who we thought could bring us something smart and different, Tony was a legitimate candidate. (Six years later, Kornheiser would join Monday Night Football after it had moved to ESPN.)

  One morning, Don was driving around Los Angeles and listening to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. Limbaugh said, “I see where Don Ohlmeyer is the new producer for Monday Night Football, and he is looking to do things outside the box. I know football. I love football. I’ll tell you what would be different—me!”

  Leave it to Don. He’d never met Rush but called him within the hour. “Rush, I heard you on the air today. Why don’t you come out to L.A. and audition?”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “We’ll see you next Tuesday.”

  Next thing you knew, here was Rush Limbaugh auditioning.

  We wanted to keep everything we were doing under wraps. So David Israel, a good friend of both Don and me who was involved in the recruiting process, found an out-of-the-way studio in the north end of the San Fernando Valley where we’d sneak the candidates in through the back door.

  Rush came in and we put on a tape of the Tennessee-Buffalo Wild Card playoff classic that had been played in January—the famed “Music City Miracle” game. We put on our headsets and I did some rudimentary play-by-play. We always wanted to give our tryout folks plenty of room and space to see what they had.

  Rush knew a lot about the NFL. It was apparent he was a huge fan and a close follower. And he knew how to connect with an audience. Love him or detest him, he knows how to communicate. You can’t possibly have that long a career if you don’t have those chops. In the end, though, it was a no-go. It wasn’t a question of polarization—Ohlmeyer was never averse to that—it was a question of whether Rush could devote the necessary time to Monday Night Football while doing his three-hour radio show five days a week.

  Meanwhile, suddenly it was June—nine weeks away from going on the air with the preseason Hall of Fame game. And we still didn’t have our wild card.

  Ohlmeyer, though, had had his eye on Dennis Miller the whole time. They had friends in common from NBC, where Don had been a top executive and Dennis had spent several years with the cast of Saturday Night Live, most famously as the host of “Weekend Update.” Dennis had grown up in Pittsburgh loving the Steelers and was a huge football fan. It was time to bring him in for the audition. At this point, we were banking on Miller being “the guy” or . . . who knows what? The clock was ticking.

  I’d never met Dennis before. Now Dan Fouts would be there for the audition as well. So the three of us were going back and forth, re-creating a broadcast over a tape of a game and Dennis was off to a good start. He’d gotten off some very funny lines and was trying to demonstrate that he knew football. It was working.

  We were calling a tape of a Packers-49ers Monday night game that had been played the previous season in San Francisco. At one point, I said, “. . . and the ball is given to Garrison Hearst over right tackle. Gain of four. Second down and six. The tackle made by number ninety-three, Cletidus Hunt.”

  “What?” says Dennis. “Who?”

  “Number ninety-three,” I repeat. “Defensive tackle CLEET-ee-us Hunt.”

  “CLEET-ee-us Hunt? That’s not a player,” says Dennis. “That’s a raid on a sorority.”

  Ohlmeyer was sitting behind the glass in the control room with his ever-present cigarette glowing in the dim light. Right then he said, “Let’s take ten.”

  “Taking ten” w
as the code for me to go outside for a private conference and meet him on the street. So there we are, on Lankershim Boulevard with tractor-trailers and eighteen-wheelers rumbling past and belching smoke. We looked at each other and simultaneously, in complete unison said, “We’ve got our man.”

  Then Don and I had a discussion. Could we get away with a line like that on the air? We never reached a conclusion, but Dennis got the job. What would have happened if Dennis had bombed in the tryout? To this day, I don’t know. Don was always confident Miller would be “the guy.”

  TO SHARE THE NEWS with the media—which had been waiting weeks for the announcement—ABC held a press conference call. Ohlmeyer had all of us come to his home in Beverly Hills. Fouts, Melissa, Eric, Dennis, and I all gathered in his den and took our places around this space-age speakerphone. As Don started to make the announcement, he got up and left the room. We all looked at each other. Don continued talking as he walked into a side bathroom. He never missed a beat. Then he walked back into the den, zipped up his fly, sat back down, finished up his introductory remarks, and said to the flower of American sports journalism, “Okay, any questions?” Don always marched to the beat of an entirely different drummer.

  The mystery surrounding the buildup had the desired effect. In July, Dennis was on the cover of Sports Illustrated wearing eye black above the tagline “Can Dennis Miller Save Monday Night Football?” (Where had I heard that before?) The question was a hot topic of discussion for several weeks.