Behind the scenes of NBC Sunday Night Football

 
 
Producer Fred Gaudelli and director Drew Esocoff of "NBC Sunday Night Football" have been working together with primetime football programing since 2001. They were first a producer/director team on ABC's "Monday Night Football" before moving over to handle the Sunday night telecast on NBC.
 
Gaudelli and Esocoff started their network career's together in 1984 at ESPN, where they both covered boxing, college basketball and college football before being named the "Monday Night Football" duo in 2001.
 
With "NBC Sunday Night Football" in town, they are just as excited as the Redskins and Cowboys to get things going with this week's telecast. Speaking to Gaudelli, he gave me a feel for the behind the scenes of "NBC Sunday Night Football."
 

25 years in primetime for Al Michaels

Thursday night September 9th the 2010 NFL season will begin with an NFC Championship game rematch between Minnesota and New Orleans. The broadcast duo of Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth will kick off another season of “NBC Sunday Night Football with a special Thursday night edition.”
 
This marks the 25th season Michaels has served as the prime-time voice of the NFL, first on ABC’s “Monday Night Football” and now on NBC.
 
Simply put, Michaels is the best play-by-play man of his generation and is the gold standard by which others are measured. He has the distinction of being the only man to call a Super Bowl, a World Series, an NBA Finals, a Stanley Cup Finals and also be part of an Olympics broadcast for two networks. I don’t have enough room in this column to list the awards he has won, and in our Monday conversation, Michaels and I talked about his career.