Al Michaels

Born in Brooklyn, New York on November 12, 1944, Alan Richard Michaels grew up captivated by sports broadcasting at Ebbets Field listening to Dodgers broadcaster Red Barber. Graduating from Arizona State University with a degree in radio and television, Michaels honed his play-by-play craft across minor league baseball and the Cincinnati Reds before joining ABC Sports in 1977. On February 22, 1980, at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, Michaels broadcast the medal-round men's ice hockey showdown between the underdog United States college team and the four-time defending gold medalist Soviet Union dynasty. As the final seconds ticked away in an unbelievable 4–3 American triumph, Michaels delivered the immortal exclamation: "Eleven seconds, you've got ten seconds, the countdown going on right now... Morrow, up to Silk... five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles? Yes!" It remains universally cited as the greatest broadcast call in American sports history. Michaels demonstrated extraordinary journalistic poise during Game 3 of the 1989 World Series when the deadly Loma Prieta earthquake struck Candlestick Park, calmly reporting live breaking news that earned him an Emmy nomination for news reporting. For nearly two decades (1986–2005), Michaels anchored ABC's "Monday Night Football," followed by a historic sixteen-year run as the voice of NBC's "Sunday Night Football" alongside John Madden and Cris Collinsworth. Recipient of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award and the Television Academy Hall of Fame, Al Michaels is the gold standard of American sports journalism.