Al Michaels Quotations

When it comes down to it, I'm thinking about football all the time. When I'm on the golf course, I'm thinking about it. It's never out of your brain.

When dealing in the technology, it becomes a question of whether you overuse something. I think that's worse than having something technologically available to you and not using it.

I still believe Emmitt has enough left in the tank to be a productive back over the next couple of seasons.

Those three words, Monday Night Football, resonate like no other.

Any time a running back reaches the age of 31 or 32, he has to lose a step. No one is a freak of nature. No one is going to be able to take the pounding a running back has to take over a 10- or 12-year career and not lose a step.

There are a number of teams that would become vastly improved with Drew Bledsoe.

I've always felt that I'm in a spontaneous business and if you script something, if you plan something, it will sound that way.

It was the Buffalo Bills at the Minnesota Vikings on NBC. It went to about five markets.

People didn't know the difference between a blue line and a clothes line.

The Miami Dolphins have to be taken seriously. Here's a team that seems to be jelling.

I think the Cowboys are one of only two teams in all of sports that engender love and hate to that extreme. The other is the Yankees. You love the Yankees or you hate the Yankees.

As a kid growing up, I was so in sync as a fan that that served me well through the years. I can feel the game. And I try to match where the game is with my inflection, with my - the tonal quality, with getting excited.

We live in this world of tweeting, and social media, and anti-social media, and all the rest, so no matter what you say, there is going to be what people say is a firestorm. I don't know what a firestorm is.

It's the bane of both the news and sports businesses, both electronic and print - 'You heard it here first!' Who cares? That's nothing but a vanity play. If it's not right, it's garbage.

Tiger Woods is like a piece of fine art that belongs in the Louvre, and so, too, is Scott Medlock's painting of Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia...a true masterpiece!

If there are dominant teams, people enjoy discussing whether that's good or bad for the game, and if there aren't any dominant teams, then people enjoy discussing that.

I always believe in miracles.

Do you believe in miracles?

There are some things in life where it's better to receive than to give, and massage is one of them.

It's funny, but when there are dominant teams, there are a number of people who rail about the fact that they're always seeing the Dallas Cowboys or the San Francisco 49ers or the Green Bay either in the playoffs or in the Super Bowl.

Well, folks. That's the greatest open in the history of television -- bar none!

I've always felt that the game itself is pretty much a melody and I am there to provide the lyrics. You want the lyrics to match the melody, because if you are composing a song or recording a song, it's cacophonous if they don't match.

This was as tough a call as I've had to make. It wasn't 80-20, it was 51-49.

Monday Night Football started in 1970, and when it started, it was something extremely special because sports had not been aired in prime time. So, it was a novelty, and a lot of people thought it wouldn't work, and, of course, it worked spectacularly well.

Nobody wants to see teams out of contention showcased in December and January. I'm sure this is something that will be discussed again this off-season.

I did the 1972 Sapporo Games, and I was also the Reds announcer and was folded into the NBC coverage for the 1972 World Series. I also did the 1979 World Series for ABC.

But we're not supposed to talk anything besides football.

I feel like I'm a creature of Monday night. I'm home and I'm staying home,

I will never repeat something verbatim on the air unless I know it's accurate. And when you go to the source, sometimes there's a better story beyond the original story. That happens all the time.

People know me from a hockey game, from an earthquake, from the O.J case.

Living here in southern California, I'll miss hearing Rocky Top for an entire week at the end of December. I was actually looking forward to it. Tennessee has a better fight song than Nebraska.

I won't be part of anything that distracts from our telecast. We are preparing to do a game that about 100 mil- lion people will watch. That is all we are doing. Next season starts next week.

The questions keep coming from different angles. All I will tell you is next season starts on Monday. Right now, we're just thinking about the Super Bowl.

We'll know in the fourth quarter that it's been 555 times 4.

With his wealth of experience, and the knowledge he's obviously accumulated through the years, Emmitt Smith would be a much smarter runner at this point of his career.

You either go through your life working for someone and getting a paycheck - and it can be a damn good paycheck, and I am not complaining as someone who has always been a salaried employee - or you can go out and become an entrepreneur.

It would be a nice way for this whole run to end with the first overtime Super Bowl.

Oswald is definitely worth more than a fourth-round draft choice. I'm going to be a trivia answer someday.

Some people haven't really seen him. They might hear maybe this guy's the best back in the league and say, 'I want to take a look at this guy.' There's a great curiosity factor with him right now.

That place rocks. When I'm in there on Monday nights, if the game is good, it's about as loud as any place in the league. People think it's laid-back ... but fans there can be as passionate as fans anywhere.

You mean Tom Brady airing one out to David Patten ?

Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, is right there... she's in town because her father was at Johnson Smith College... and she was delivering a speech there.

That's a bad call. That's adding insult to injury.

It was more a case of me being very comfortable if I could stay with my group. It couldn't have gotten any better than it was the last four years.

They made a mess of the end of the first half and the end of the game.

I'm just glad to spread joy around the world. And I'm glad that Oswald wasn't reduced to playing the role of a rabbit at a dog track.

If the Patriots feel that Tom Brady is their man and they want to dance the dance with him in the future, then Bledsoe will be expendable.

I never thought I would live long enough to see a No. 6 seed go to the Super Bowl and be favored over a No. 1 seed.

I read an interview with her a couple of years ago... when she talked about what she wanted to do post-government career. She wanted to be the commissioner of the National Football League.

How could it be better than this? I think it should move here permanently.

If I see something dubious, say on a blog or a Web site, and I don't see it anywhere else, I'll just go right to the source and check it out.

I don't let anything distract me or unsettle me. I'm thinking of this year. I can't respond to rumors.

I began to realize more and more how much I was going to miss being with those people. That's my family, that's my broadcasting family.

For the last few years, we at ABC have been lobbying for a... flexible schedule... which would allow us to select a game of importance in the latter part of the season. We'd like to think that progress has been made in this area, but one of the problems is that the other television partners, FOX and CBS, would lose one game from their inventory. Neither of those networks want to lose a game, and I can certainly understand their reasoning.

You wish maybe it could've gone on forever, but that's the nature of the business, ... This year, I'm just going to enjoy every moment and relish every minute of every game.

You've got these guys and the Chicago Bears.

The game is No. 1. You are an adjunct to the game. In a studio, there is no game. You are the star. That's why you are there. For the game, you can't go away from the game and beat your chest. People are there to watch the game. You are there to supplement, not to override or overwhelm.