Michaels Will Switch to ESPN

Al Michaels will move over to ESPN as the play-by-play announcer on “Monday Night Football” when the cable network takes over the series from its sister Disney network ABC in 2006.

Michaels will be joined in the booth by commentator Joe Theismann, with Suzy Kolber and Michele Tafoya working the sidelines. Theismann is a member of ESPN’s team that announces Sunday night NFL games. The two other members of that team, Mike Patrick and Paul Maguire, are expected to be given other assignments after the 2005 season.

The announcement came from ESPN Tuesday in a conference call only hours after NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol told reporters that his network had ended negotiations with Michaels.

Michaels and ESPN last week tentatively agreed on a multiyear deal that reportedly calls for an annual salary of $4 million. But an announcement wasn’t planned until Michaels returned from a Hawaiian vacation.

Ebersol forced ESPN’s hand during an earlier conference call, ostensibly to announce that Bob Costas would serve as the studio host when NBC begins televising “Sunday Night Football” in 2006 and that his contract had been extended through 2012. Ebersol let it be known then that Michaels was out of the running for the play-by-play job.

The competition between NBC and ESPN, more than 13 months before the new NFL television contract goes into effect, is becoming nearly as intriguing as any matchup on the field.

NBC executives say they still have the league’s primary package, that it has simply moved from Monday nights to Sunday nights. ESPN executives say the primary package has always been on Monday nights and will remain there after the upcoming season, just on another channel.

Although ESPN scored a victory over NBC with the signing of Michaels, NBC scored a victory on June 15 when it announced that it had hired John Madden, Michaels’ current partner on ABC’s “Monday Night Football.” NBC reportedly gave Madden a deal worth $4 million a year.

Michaels is in the final season of an ABC contract to call NBA games and that contract reportedly pays $2 million a year.

NBC offered Michaels less than $4 million a year and Ebersol said money was the main reason negotiations broke off. But Michaels denied salary was a key factor in his decision.

“Those three words, ‘Monday Night Football’ resonate like no other,” Michaels said during the ESPN conference call. “There is something magnetizing about Monday night.”

George Bodenheimer, the president of ESPN and ABC Sports, and Mark Shapiro, ESPN executive vice president in charge of programming and production, praised Patrick and Maguire in making Tuesday’s announcement.

Shapiro said there were a number of play-by-play jobs awaiting Patrick, including possibly college football, and that Maguire would figure to have a role in ESPN’s NFL studio show.

Of Patrick, Shapiro said, “He’s got a deal like Dick Vitale. He tells us when he wants to stop working at ESPN.”

Shapiro said that both he and Michaels were in favor of going to a two-man booth for “Monday Night Football.”

Shapiro said he had negotiated with Madden and Fox’s Troy Aikman about the “Monday Night Football” commentating job, and had considered a long list of other possibilities. One of those was Tony Kornheiser of ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption.”

Shapiro said credibility was a factor in deciding to go with Theismann, an experienced football commentator who played quarterback for the Washington Redskins.

On Monday, Fox announced it had signed Aikman to a seven-year contract to work with play-by-play announcer Joe Buck on its No. 1 announcing team.

Cris Collinsworth, who had been a third member of that team, left Fox to go to NBC as a studio analyst.