Michaels Traded for Cartoon Rabbit...

In perhaps one of the most unusual trades in sports history it was announced today by NBC that it had acquired Al Michaels from ESPN for pre Mickey Disney Cartoon Character "Oswald the Lucky Rabbit".
I’m not making this up.
Al is associated with two momentous events in the history of broadcasting, the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" and the 1989 World Series where he happened to be behind the mike at Candlestick Park when an earthquake struck San Francisco.
Michaels was signed to a $ multi-million 4 year contract with Disney affiliate company ESPN last June to do play by play on ESPN’s new Monday Night Football. Yesterday it was announced that Michaels had opted out of the Monday Night booth and Mike Tirico was chosen to take his place. Behind the scenes ESPN and NBC were negotiating to bring Michaels to NBC’s Sunday Night booth reuniting him with John Madden his broadcast partner from MNF who had previously signed with NBC.
As compensation for Michael's contract Disney/ESPN wanted intellectual property rights held by NBC. These included the opportunity to telecast Friday night coverage of the next four Ryder Cups, expanded highlight coverage of the Olympics and the rights to Oswald the Rabbit.
Oswald was Uncle Walt’s first public cartoon character starring in 26 silent cartoons between 1927 and 1935 and served as a prototype for Mickey Mouse. The rights to the silent rabbit became lost to Universal Studios in 1928 and eventually found their way into NBC’s vault.
NBC Sports President Dick Ebersol in making the announcement said he had been trying to make the deal with Disney/ESPN since last summer.