Al Michaels isn’t feeling Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift’s insertion into his Thursday Night NFL broadcasts. However, the NFL loves the vibrant storyline that has swept the game for most if the late season. That’s why it looks a little suspect that after Michaels expressed his frustration with the focus on their romance weaved throughout the game, he didn’t land a job adding his commentary during the NFL playoffs, per multiple reports.
The 79-year-old broadcaster revealed in an October interview with Sports Illustrated what he felt about the camera time given to Swift during the Chiefs-Broncos game on Oct. 12.
“What we’re gonna do tonight, everything in moderation,” Michaels said to Sports Illustrated. “Our crew talked about it this morning. You can’t make a sideshow the show.”
We Are All Al Michaels’ Frustration
Swift’s arrival at Chiefs games is a talking point that intertwines her narrative into the game when Kelce is playing. For any hardliner football fan, the only desire is to keep the main thing the main thing, and that’s the game.
“The vast majority of the audience are tuning in to watch a football game,” Michaels continued. “There are people, I don’t know how many, it could be a sizable number, but it’s certainly not a majority, that if you trained the camera on her all night long, they’d be satisfied with that. This is not what we’re doing to do.
“There might be an appropriate shot or a couple. I don’t know what the number is going to be. If Kelce scores six touchdowns, who the hell knows what we’re going to do. But for the most part, just in moderation. The game is still the important element here, by far. That’s our thought. After that, you sort of make it, one of my favorite words, farcical.”
Stand Your Ground
During the season, Michaels has faced backlash over his demured energy during the 2023 regular season broadcasts. Last month, he faced heavy criticism but self-deprecatingly conceded that he is like a baseball pitcher past his prime. However, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong on the Swift relationship coverage because it’s exhausting.
“Moderation. That’s our word,” Michaels continued doubling down. “Everything in moderation. What do you do at a certain point? ‘There she is.’ OK. Got it.”
Al Michaels’s version of “real talk,” and he apparently caught an “L” because of it.
