In the wake of last week’s Super Bowl, most football fans have been bracing themselves for six months of football-free living. It’s much like lent, in that you deny yourself the pleasure with the assurance of the joyful celebration to come …. Well, maybe not THAT much like lent.

So in the spirit of trying to survive the long, cold football winter, I was encouraged by the story that broke this week about the journey of Al Michaels.

You see, football broadcasting is a huge business. The TV coverage of football is a huge part of why football truly is America’s pastime. Some would aruge that football is the perfect sport for television. Unlike baseball, which plods along with comforting regularity for nine innings, football appeals much better to the short attention spans of viewers. The broadcasts are punctuated by moments of intense action followed by long stretches of re-grouping, allowing the networks to show multiple repaly angles or — even more important — commercials. As much as I love baseball, it’s probably the perfect sport for radio. You don’t have to devote your full attention to the details of a baseball broadcast. It’s perfect background listening while you’re doing something else. Good baseball broadcasters understand the value of painting pictures with words, and baseball’s pace allows for plenty of verabl brushstrokes.

ABC had carried Monday Night Football for 35 years until then end of 2005. The idea behind the broadcast was to play an NFL game during prime time on a weeknight to capture a huge national audience. For years, Howard Cosell, Don Meredith, and Frank Gifford held sway in the broadcast booth, providing a number of memorable moments. OJ SImpson and Joe Namath spent time in the booth before Al Michaels joined Gifford. Dan Dierdorf joined the team shortly thereafter. The cast of broadcasters around Michaels changed every couple of seasons until John Maden joined the team in 2002. The Michaels/Madden partneship proved to be one of the most entertaining combinations in the program’s history.

MNF proved to be an expensive program to produce in the last decade. ABC and the NFL announced in early 2005 that the game would move to ESPN starting in 2006. ESPN had been broadcasting a Sunday night NFL game and along with ABC is owned by Disney. As part of the deal, NBC got the rights to air the Sunday night NFL game, which will bring NFL football to network television on one of the highest viewership nights of the week.

John Madden jumped to NBC once his deal with ABC expired and was joined by key memebers of the MNF production staff. ESPN announced that its Monday night crew would consist of Al Michaels and Joe Theisman. It was thought that Michaels would rather have been with Madden on NBC, but his contract with ABC and ESPN prevented that.

Earlier this week, ESPN announced that it was replacing Michaels with Mike Tirico and Tony Kornheiser, who would both join Theisman to form the new ESPN Monday night trio. This left Michaels shut-out of football play-by-play. He was slated to call other games for the networks, including ABC’s coverage of the NBA. It was clear, though, that Michaels wanted out of ABC and was looking for the chance to re-unite with Madden at NBC. Essentially, Michaels was demanding a trade.

This week, ABC and ESPN agreed to his request and traded Michaels to NBC. In return for Michaels’ services, ESPN picked up quite a few assets from NBC. ESPN gained the rights to broadcast live Friday coverage of the Ryder Cup golf championship between the United States and Europe in 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014, as well as the right to re-air NBC coverage and extended highlights. They also got expanded Olympics highlights from this year through 2012, Monday Night Football promotions during the NBC Sunday night through 2011, and expanded highlights from Notre Dame football, the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness through 2011.

Oh … and ESPN/ABC/Disney also got a rabbit. Not a real rabbit. A cartoon rabbit … named Oswald.

Oswald the Rabbit was a creation of Walt Disney in 1927. The cartoon was distributed by Universal, which kept the rights to distribute the cartoon character. Because Disney didn’t own the rights, they decided to create another character … named Mickey Mouse.

As part of the Michaels deal, NBC (which is really NBC Universal, owned by General Electric) agreed to return Oswald the Rabbit to ABC/ESPN/Disney after all these years.

Is it football season yet?