Al Michaels has called Super Bowls, Olympic hockey miracles, and primetime football for nearly 50 years by focusing on getting it right rather than getting loud. Which increasingly makes him the wrong kind of broadcaster for this era.
The legendary play-by-play voice appeared on The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz on Thursday and delivered a diagnosis of what’s broken in sports media. When asked what pisses him off most about the changes, Michaels didn’t need long to answer.
“I think there’s just a lot of stuff out there,” Michaels said. “I’ve always been a stickler for really trying to get everything right. Have I? Of course not. I mean, I’ve made tons of mistakes through the years. You can’t do as many games as I’ve done and not make a ton of mistakes. But I think right now, a lot of it is just how can I make noise? How can I yell? How can I scream? How can I get into an argument with people?”
The shift he’s describing is obvious to anyone who consumes sports media regularly. The economic incentives have changed. Making noise generates clicks, views, and engagement in ways that careful analysis or accurate reporting often don’t. Yelling gets attention. Picking fights gets attention. Being provocative gets attention. Being right matters less than being loud.
“To sum it up, I guess basically I would say it’s more heat than light,” Michaels said. “And sometimes it’s all heat and no light.”
Heat is Stephen A. Smith screaming about something that didn’t happen. Light is actually explaining what did happen and why it matters. Heat is Skip Bayless building an entire career on bad-faith arguments designed to provoke responses. Light is breaking down the film or providing context that helps viewers better understand the game.
The problem is that heat works. It generates engagement. It creates shareable moments. It builds audiences. Light requires more effort from both the creator and the consumer. Heat is easy. Light is hard.
Which means Al Michaels’ complaint, however accurate, doesn’t change anything. The platforms reward what they reward. The networks respond to what works. And heat works better than light in every measurable way that matters to them.
Whether that’s progress or decline depends on what you think sports media should be. If it’s entertainment designed to generate engagement and viral moments, then the current landscape is exactly what it should be. If it’s supposed to inform viewers and help them understand what they’re watching, then Al Michaels is right.
There’s a lot of heat out there. Not nearly enough light.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.