By Laura Nelson Student Writer It was to be one of the most famous moments in American sports history. But in the heat of the moment, as the clock ran out on the United States-USSR Olympic hockey match, Al Michaels shouted the first thing that came to mind: "Do you believe in miracles? YES!" "People said, 'Did you come up with a line beforehand?'" Michaels, who called the 1980 Olympic semifinal game for ABC , said yesterday. "Come up with a line? I thought the U.S. was going to lose 12-1. I thought I'd be saying, 'Please stay tuned,' when we were losing 8 to nothing." This afternoon, Michaels and two other famous sports broadcasters – longtime Olympics anchor Jim Lampley and Jim Nantz of CBS– traded battle stories and remembered notable moments in their journalism careers during "Stories from the Booth: Broadcasters and the Games" at USC Annenberg. The 90-minute event was part of the USC Conference on Sports: the Olympics," a two-day conference hosted by USC Annenberg's Institute of Sports, Media & Society. Adjunct journalism professor Jeff Fellenzer moderated the discussion.
Student writer Laura Nelson holds an Olympic torch while listening to three sports broadcasters discuss the Olympics.
The event also recognized another Trojan, track star and WWII prisoner-of-war survivor Louis Zamperini. Audience members held his torch (pictured, left) from the 2002 Salt Lake City winter games, one of the five Olympic flames he has carried. Lampley, Michaels and Nantz discussed the changes they've seen in sports broadcasting, including doping allegations and an ever-expanding field of sports to cover. Lampley worshipped Jim McKay as a child and dreamed of being an Olympic broadcaster. Now, he said, kids are more likely thinking of college basketball, the Masters Tournament or the NFL. "[The Olympics] just don't mean the same thing anymore," Lampley said. "Addition of sports to the Olympics has become a circus and it's getting out of hand." But changes to the field, they said, doesn't change the most important tenants of sports journalism: finding a good story and telling it well. "It's about language," Michaels said. "It's about your ability to feel comfortable in complete sentences and coherent thoughts without being bashful or embarrassed." "And to tell a story," Nantz said. "Sometimes it needs to be minutes long, sometimes 15 seconds, but it needs to make sense, with a beginning, middle and end."
