We probably won’t be hearing Mike Tirico call any NFL games this season for NBC. It was first reported by the New York Daily News that the National Football League does not want Mike Tirico to call games for NBC this fall.
As the New York Daily News first reported through their sources: “With that in mind, NBC execs have asked their NFL partners if they could use Tirico instead of AL Michaels on their new Thursday Night Football. NBC made the case it was bringing in Tirico, someone who is a high-caliber, high-quality yakker, and one who was the voice of an NFL primetime package for 10 seasons. He was the lead play-by-play guy for ESPN. It is not like the NFL’s broadcast division was not familiar with his work. However, the NFL was still not impressed and according to sources have nixed that option.”
It should be noted though that Al Michaels who is 71 years old was not named as the member of the NBC team that didn’t want to call Thursday Night Football. Al Michaels already calls the Sunday Night Football games for NBC and does not want to double his workload. Here is the NFL’s response to this situation through the Daily News.
“We like the idea of having the same booth announcers from Sunday night and Sunday afternoon to carry over to Thursday,” Brain McCarthy, the NFL’s VP of Communications said. “We are hoping for that same magic Sunday Night Football has with Al and Chris to carry over to Thursday night.”
It seems this will end up being a long battle between the NFL and Al Michaels. However, they don’t have much time and need to decide on something sooner rather than later as the NFL season is rapidly approaching. Also, I don’t see the problem with Mike Tirico. He is a veteran broadcaster who has been at this game for a bit of time. It will be interesting to see what the result is and who will be calling games for NBC on Thursday Nights.