FanHouse Al Michaels

I've been watching football on TV for 30 years, and John Madden has been calling NFL games on TV for 30 years, and it's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of an NFL weekend without hearing Madden's voice. Al Michaels, Madden's on-air partner for the last seven seasons, offered a powerful testimony about Madden's importance, but first let me just offer my own recollections.

John Madden's retirement became a little less tear-filled today when NBC announced that Cris Collinsworth will be his official replacement on Sunday Night Football, joining Al Michaels in the booth.

This is according to a statement from NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol.

John Madden, the former coach whose booming voice and boisterous personality made him the most influential broadcaster in the history of televised football, has announced that he is retiring from the booth.

John Madden is preparing to call Super Bowl XLIII alongside Al Michaels, and in a sign of just how much he likes working with Michaels, Madden says he's going to quit broadcasting whenever Michaels does.

FanHouse's resident referee will chime in weekly with thoughts on major topics relating to officiating. We call it The Zebra Report. Matt Snyder is a high school official with eight years experience. While this is like a third-year resident critiquing the work of a world-renowned surgeon, it's still better than someone who has never worn the stripes.

Wow, this was a long weekend to those who support the boys in stripes. That group may only consist of myself at this point, but I still do. Those people who like to call the officials "blind" -- which, by the way, is incredibly uncreative and lame -- or believe they are out to screw a team out of a game, really don't have any idea what it takes to officiate at that level. Hell, I don't. I do know what it's like to be on the field and be a constant scapegoat for people who aren't accountable for themselves and/or their favorite team.

Midway through last night's beatdown, Al Michaels nonchalantly noted that John Madden wouldn't be in Tampa for next week's Seahawks-Bucs game, and awkwardness promptly ensued.

It came out of nowhere, especially since Madden is, ironically, the Brett Favre of the broadcast booth, having called 476 straight games over a 28-year television career. But at 72, and as someone who refuses to step foot on an airplane, Madden makes his way to venues via the aptly named Madden Cruiser.

Which means for this current stretch -- games in Jacksonville, San Diego and Tampa Bay on consecutive Sunday nights -- the Cruiser would log 4,782 miles in just 14 days.

Interestingly, it wasn't Madden's idea to take a bye week, but NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol. Still, Madden didn't dismiss it out of hand:

"I wasn't reluctant as much as I was 'let's wait and see how it goes,'" Madden said in a telephone interview Monday. "Last year we had a couple of tough (trips). I still enjoy the travel, but you'd like to be home once in a while. I've got five grandchildren. It's a quality of life issue. The 49ers and the Raiders not being good also has hurt, because you never get a home game. Even when L.A. had a team, I'd get to be home. When you see the grand kids, it's like they've grown two feet. So I'd like to check in once awhile, and this is a good chance to do that."

So, to recap: this is all Al Davis' fault. If the Raiders weren't so unwatchable, maybe Madden would get to call a home game more than once a decade. Thanks, old man. Thanks, for nothing.

Thanks to CBS Sportsline breaking the news that Tom Brady may or may not be out for the year, the Patriots have to think about finding somebody -- anybody -- to serve as Matt Cassel's backup. (I hear Drew Bledsoe's not doing anything).

According to Al Michaels during tonight's Sunday Night Football telecast, New England will workout Chris Simms, presumably tomorrow. What this means for Cassel's immediate future is uncertain, but after spending three years in this offense, I can't imagine he'd lose his job in a few weeks to a street free agent. Then again, we're talking about a guy who's been riding the pine ever since he left high school, so nothing's outside the realm of possibility.

No idea if the Patriots will have other quarterbacks in to compete for a roster spot, but, frankly, I'm shocked that Doug Flutie or Vinny Testaverde weren't first on Bill Belichick's "in case of emergency" list. They know the offense, are virtually indestructible, and Flutie can even drop-kick in a pinch.

Oh, and if you haven't heard, Peter King announced on "Football Night in America" that Tom Brady is the NFL. We must find a way to carry on, however; Tom would want it that way, I think.

Peter King has competition for the title of Brett Favre's Biggest Fan. Tonight, NBC will carry the season opener between the Redskins and Giants, which means that Al Michaels and John Madden will have three hours to talk about all the things that make Favre great (pray for overtime because, frankly, three hours just isn't enough time to do that eulogy justice).

The announcers spoke recently about the off-season goings-on that eventually led to Favre landing in New York, and, predictably, they were shocked at how events unfolded.

"It still does look weird," Michaels said. "It's Joe Montana in a Kansas City uniform. It's Wayne Gretzky in a Los Angeles Kings uniform. It's Michael Jordan in a Washington Wizards uniform. It's that kind of a thing. It's going to take a while to get used to, especially here in New York, seeing posters and a lot of stuff in the newspapers." ...

"I was really surprised the way this whole thing came down," Madden said. "I was surprised first of all when he retired. He always told me that as long as he was healthy and he had a chance to win, he'd keep playing. Obviously he was healthy and they were in the championship game, so they had a good team."

And that brings the grand total of Americans who actually thought Favre had retired when he gave that tearful retirement press conference to one.

Jerry Jones is bonkers, but he somehow manages to make it work. He's the Cowboys general manager, which seems like a ridiculously bad idea ... except he's been pretty successful at it. Same with the halfway house Dallas uses to convert would-be offenders into model citizens and quality football players.

So keeping that in mind, Jones' explanation for why he spent 57 percent more than he needed to build the Cowboys' new stadium seems less insane. From Sports Business Daily via Sports by Brooks:

Jones said he could have built the new facility for about $700M. "The reason I'm spending [$1.1B] on that stadium in Arlington is because of perception," he said. "Only a fraction of football fans will ever set foot in it, but hundreds of millions will see it on television." How the stadium looks is important, he said, as well as "how John Madden talks about it, and how Al Michaels talks about it, and let me assure you that after I've had some time with them, they'll know everything there is to know about it."

The takeaway: Jerry Jones, like the rest of us, doesn't give a crap what Joe Buck thinks.

For the fiscally-minded, worry not; according to this 2006 ESPN.com article, the Cowboys initially projected the stadium to cost $650 million, and Arlington voters agreed to go halfsies. As long as Jones covered any overruns.

Yay, capitalism.

NFL Network will not be hiring Al Michaels as the play-by-play voice of its live regular-season game coverage, Richard Sandomir of the New York Times reports.

All indications are that NFL Network would have loved to hire Michaels, but that Michaels declined:

"NBC was open to it, but it didn't work out from Al's point of view," said Steve Bornstein, the president of the NFL Network. "We never got to the specifics."

Michaels has, in the past, indicated that he much prefers being on network television to cable. He has derided ESPN as a "four-letter network," and if ESPN is too small-time for Michaels, NFL Network obviously would be, too.

With Michaels out of the picture and Bryant Gumbel long gone, next up for NFL Network could be Tom Hammond, an old pro who would be a solid if not spectacular addition.