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Al Michaels saves doomed NBC Thanksgiving Football promotion by being Al Michaels
Like anyone who has hung around sports broadcasting long enough, Al Michaels has been thrown a few curveballs over the years. Hell, his most famous call—"DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?!"—was a reaction to the incredible backdoor slider that was Team USA taking down the Soviet ice hockey juggernaut at the 1980 Winter Olympics. And while Al's best days as a hitter are definitely behind him, on Sunday he proved he still has a little of that Michaels magic left, turning a truly bizarre NBC Thanksgiving Football promotion at a turkey slaughterhouse into broadcast gravy. Take it away, old buddy...
"Toyota, let's go places," says Michaels, segueing seamlessly into the grisly scenes unfolding on the screen, "Those boys [referencing the turkeys], they're going places...It's gonna be a rough week for that group."
That's gold, Al. GOLD.
All joking aside, Michaels helped to bring a little levity to what would quickly become a DEFCON 3 or 4 Twitter shitstorm for NBC, who stepped in it with vegetarians, animal rights folks, and normal American consumers with a proven track record of not wanting to see how the proverbial sausage stuffing is made. Who could have possibly seen this coming in 2019 AD?
Say what you want about internet fragility and the like, but this is what we sophisticated media professionals call a BBD—Bad Business Decision. Apparently it's tradition, but so is green bean casserole. That doesn't make it right.
Thanks to Al and his silver tongue, though, NBC is going to escape this one more or less unscathed as they gear up for another long Thanksgiving Day of giant turkey balloons and gobbled-up running backs. In the meantime, if you would still like to boycott the network whose logo is LITERALLY A BIRD, just switch over to Fox, who have always upheld the highest levels of journalistic integrity and are toooootally not responsible, even in the slightest, for the impending collapse of American democracy.