When John Madden retired from the NFL booth in 2009, Al Michaels was right there to see how the Hall of Famer rode off into the sunset with class.
And as Michaels, who is now the lead NFL announcer for Amazon Prime Video, nears the end of his career, he wants it to look the same. No farewell tour, no long goodbye, none of it.
“People say, ‘why don’t you do, like, a victory tour?’ No. What are you talking about?” Michaels told Dan Le Batard in a recent interview on South Beach Sessions. “First of all, it would be embarrassing for me to do that, to go around the country, oh this is Al’s last game. To me, it’s not a big deal.”
In January ahead of calling his first NFL playoff game for Amazon, Michaels said he was “leaning very heavily” toward returning for the 2025 season. While his contract expired after this year’s playoffs, Michaels said Amazon wants him back.
But in the interview with Le Batard, Michaels referred to another idol to describe his approach to retirement. When Vin Scully retired from Los Angeles Dodgers broadcasts, he wanted to give Angelenos a chance to say goodbye.
Without that home fan base to cherish, Al Michaels doesn’t think there is any reason to do it.
“When you’re on national television, there’s really no home base,” Michaels explained. “And I suppose if I were an announcer for a team, I might have a farewell tour, but I’m all over the place.”
While Al Michaels appreciates that football fans and his colleagues in sports broadcasting might like to pay tribute to him if he announced his final season ahead of time, he doesn’t want to make himself the story.
“When you make yourself the story, you do a disservice to the business,” Michaels told Le Batard. “So I don’t want to be the story, I want to be the narrator or the connection or the conduit. But not the story, no.”
After a lifetime calling everything from the 1980 Miracle on Ice to the NBA Finals to a record 11 Super Bowls, Michaels has gotten more from his profession than perhaps anyone to ever do it. That’s just enough for him.
“I think when the time comes, I’ll pretty much say, ‘thank you very much, and I’ll see ya,'” Michaels said.