Al Michaels Gets Traded
What’s the weirdest trade in sports history? Is it the famous stupid trades like Herschel Walker or Ricky Williams? Is it the recent debacle that was Luka to the Lakers? Maybe you want to pull up a dark horse candidate like Trent Richardson to the Colts or Jon Gruden being traded to Tampa Bay? I think it’s none of those. It wasn’t even a player trade. It was a trade so strange you might not even know about it.
In 2006 the Disney/ABC/ESPN evil behemoth earned the rights to MNF. In the aftermath of that acquisition, John Madden left. He signed with NBC, the now owner of SNF rights. Al Michaels, the longtime ABC broadcasting voice, apparently wanted to go with him. ESPN didn’t exactly want to lose both icons to a rival network. The man in charge of figuring all of this out, ESPN president George Bodenheimer, apparently spoke to Disney president Bob Iger, who was fine with letting Michaels walk if Bodenheimer could get the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from NBC. Bodenheimer himself wrote a pretty good summary of this entire saga for ESPN in 2015.
If you do not know your animation lore, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was Mickey Mouse before Mickey Mouse. He was a character Walt Disney created for Universal Pictures. Disney and Ub Iwerks created multiple Oswald shorts for Universal and it helped get Disney off the ground, before tensions arose and Disney parted ways with Universal after a contract renewal dispute. Disney went on to make that stupid mouse on a steamboat cartoon that changed the world and Oswald just sorta faded into nothing. Eventually Universal would join with NBC, which is how NBC obtained the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
At some point the game development studio Buena Vista Games (Owned by Disney) would pitch a game that included Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Bob Iger liked the idea, which is why he told Bodenheimer to go get the rights for Al Michaels. So Al Michaels, one of the best broadcasters in history, got traded to NBC so Disney could make the video game Epic Mickey. Weird shit.
It’s hard to look back and not think NBC won this trade, hard. Epic Mickey? More like Epic Midey. The idea that so entranced Iger ended up being a game that was a shell of its potential and came out to middlingly positive reviews, and you likely forgot it existed until this post. MNF has only gotten worse and worse over the years under the ESPN brand. It went from the most hyped football game of the week, the premiere football primetime experience, to that other primetime game we watch out of obligation. Barely a step above TNF at this rate. Part of the reason this happened was because ESPN could never get a good booth. We’ve had some real bad booths over the years. Tony Kornheiser was never a good fit. Booger McFarland has his Boogermobile, which sucked and actively blocked spectators’ views. Jason Witten was so bad for one year he unretired to play football again. ESPN toyed with silly concerts at halftime and all kinds of terrible gimmicks.
Eventually they managed to snag Buck and Aikman from Fox and the old classic duo not giving much of a shit every night has breathed at least some life back into the MNF experience by grounding it. They also came up with the Manningcast, a win for people craving the occasional alternate style.
Meanwhile Al Michaels and John Madden (and then Collinsworth) would turn SNF into the biggest football game of the week. Whatever problems you may have with them (ya’ll know how much I hate Collinsworth), NBC has the best production value and best overall presentation from any network. Al Michaels might be getting piss drunk over at Amazon now but he helped this happen for NBC and they haven’t looked back. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit? His copyright expired two years ago, so you can just make Oswald stuff now.
Put Oswald in Smash
I owned Epic Mickey and even I forgot it existed before this post. Of the Wii games that were ostensibly geared towards people who like video games rather than their grandparents, it was uh, certainly one of them. Certainly not as actually good as something like Muramasa and I wouldn’t give it the nostalgia credit I give to Conduit.
And it just got remastered not a year or so back too. Early 20thC animation sets me on edge, especially that quasi-creepy Harman-Ising style they used in Cuphead, so I didn’t really rate it that much.
Al Michaels used to cover all sorts of ridiculous stuff (stuff like arm wrestling championships in Petaluma, CA) for Wide World of Sports back when that’s what Wide World of Sports was… and this is still probably the strangest thing about his career.
ABC’s Wide World of Sports was proto-ESPN8 “The Ocho”
ESPN ITSELF was the proto The Ocho…when it first appeared it was known for table tennis and Australian football, and look how not-far those 2 have come in 45 years…
I remember Epic Mickey because it was on the cover of Nintendo Power. Epic Mickey 2 was the final game reviewed in its final issue, as well (Dec 2012).
Apparently it was also mid.
I still think the dumbest player trade, or rather the one with the least justifiable reasoning behind it, was one you didn’t mention: Deandre Hopkins on a cheap-for-his-level-of-play contract for a 2nd and a toxic asset in post-injury, old, overpaid David Johnson. I can’t even begin to imagine the reasoning where this managed to work out, where I can at least imagine things like the Luka trade working out if, say, Luka continues to be a black hole on D and Anthony Davis never gets injured.
Did you know Epic Mickey got a sequel? And a remake on Switch? Apparently the sequel was flat out bad! At least, usually that’s what a 57-64 range of scores on MetaCritic means.
that does seem to me like a weirder trade than when the Tigers and Indians traded managers in the… 60s? 70s? some time when they were both complete ass, I forget the exact year
I’m absolutely showing this to my daughter. She hates football and sports in general but LOVES Oswald and collects stuff with him. In the last few years, she got into pin trading and she already has probably 15 Oswald pins. Don’t hold me to the number. I know pro traders that are jealous of the special edition pins she has of him. That includes, pop, plushes, hats, and shirts. So obviously, I’D DO THIS TRADE!
And, of course, this comes out on the day that the NFL essentially traded some of its properties to Disney (including NFL RedZone) in order to turn ESPN into a 24×7 propaganda network.
We can connect with da youth by having Oswald announce the games.