On February 9, 2006, NBC confirmed that Michaels would be joining Madden at the network to broadcast football on Sunday nights, thus ending Michaels' 20 year run on Monday Night Football and almost 30 years of service with ABC.[11] In exchange for letting Michaels out of his contract with ABC and ESPN, NBC Universal sold ESPN cable rights to Friday coverage of the next four Ryder Cups, granted ESPN increased usage of Olympic highlights, and sold to parent company Disney the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a cartoon character developed by Walt Disney himself (which he lost in 1928) but previously owned by Universal Pictures (now NBC Universal). NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol explained:
We earn nothing from those rights; they've had no value in the United States.

Michaels had a bemused take on the "trade." After it was noted to Michaels that the Kansas City Chiefs gave the New York Jets a draft pick as compensation for releasing coach Herman Edwards from his contract, Michaels stated:
Oswald is definitely worth more than a fourth-round draft choice. I'm going to be a trivia answer someday.

However, in a recent article with the Magazine Game Informer, Warren Spector, a designer on the game Epic Mickey, [slated for release on the Wii in 2010], stated that CEO Bob Iger wanted Oswald to be in the game so badly, he made this trade to get the rights of the character back.[12]

Michaels began his new NBC tenure on August 6, 2006, with the network's telecast of the preseason Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, while his regular-season debut came on September 7 of that year. On February 1, 2009, Michaels called Super Bowl XLIII, his first Super Bowl telecast for NBC and seventh overall as a play-by-play announcer. Michaels is the third man to ever do play-by-play for an NBC broadcast of a Super Bowl, following the footsteps of Curt Gowdy and Dick Enberg.