Legendary NFL announcer takes brutal on-air shot at Donald Trump over failed $1 billion attempt to buy franchise

President Donald Trump's failed bid to buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014 was thrust back into the spotlight during the team's Thursday Night Football win over the visiting Detroit Lions.

With Amazon Prime cameras panning to Bills owner Terry Pegula at the team's new stadium, legendary play-by-play announcer Al Michaels began to regale his audience with the story of the 2014 sale.

'There were basically three bidders,' Michaels began. 'Pegula, who won it at [$1.4 billion]; a Toronto group, [rock star Jon] Bon Jovi was in it…

'And the other bidder, Donald J. Trump, who said publicly, "I'm gonna write a cashier's check for a billion dollars." The league said, "nah, we're good. We'll take Pegula."'

Pegula's 2014 purchase of the team represented Trump's fourth failed run at buying an NFL franchise, not including his doomed foray into the USFL.

Trump supporters quickly took offense at Michaels' comment.

'People watch football to escape all the bulls*** that goes on in the world,' one angry critic wrote on X. 'Nobody wants to hear that political nonsense.'

'lol am I supposed to care more about a guy that speaks on sports for a living or the sitting president?' another asked. 'F*** Al.'

One critic suggested Michaels 'retire because he's becoming more senile every week.'

'Remember,' they added, 'go woke go broke.'

Trump wasn't too heartbroken and has since questioned the seriousness of his own bid, while remaining complimentary towards Pegula. And two years later, when Trump was embarking on his first successful White House campaign, then-Bills coach Rex Ryan stumped for Trump at a campaign rally at the Niagara Center north of Buffalo. 

Michaels did recently take another swipe at Trump while previewing Thursday's Bills game earlier in the preseason. 

'But we'll be by Lake something like Ontario or whatever it's going to be called by the time we get to Buffalo,' Michaels said. 'Anyway, you know what I'm talking about… Read the news.'

Although Buffalo is a short drive from Lake Ontario, it actually sits on Lake Erie.

Regardless, Michaels' comment was a reference to Trump's widely mocked attempt to change the name of Lake Ontario to 'Lake America' amid an ongoing trade war with Canada.

Trump's long-running desire to be involved with the NFL predates his days as owner of the USFL's New Jersey Generals.

Trump only bought into the USFL after striking out in his effort to acquire the NFL's Baltimore Colts in 1983.

A year later, Trump had a reported chance to buy the Dallas Cowboys for just $50 million but declined, allowing Jerry Jones to acquire the franchise for $140 million later in the decade. Now the Cowboys rank as the most valuable team in sports.

And Trump wasn't only using money to get an NFL team. He also tried using leverage, according to Jeff Pearlman's 2018 book, 'Football for a Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL.'

According to interviews conducted by Pearlman, Trump's initial plan was to have the USFL fold and the NFL absorb the Generals as an expansion franchise.

However, during a meeting with then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle in New York City's Pierre Hotel in 1984, that plan was foiled.

'He basically said to Rozelle,' Pearlman told The Daily Mail in 2018, 'I don't really give a s*** about the USFL. I want an NFL team. What do I have to do to get in the NFL?'

'It was basically an offer to throw the USFL under the bus.' Trump did not get the answer he was looking for.

'Rozelle said to him, 'As long as I'm the commissioner, you're never going to have a team,'' Pearlman continued. 'He didn't trust him. He thought he was a scumbag.

'He didn't say, 'I think you're a scumbag,' but Rozelle made his feelings toward Trump very well known. [Rozelle] also made them well known during the trial when he testified.'

Unable to pay its bills, the league folded before the 1986 season. Another league with the same name was re-launched in 2022 and that has since merged into the United Football League.

Trump might stand a better chance of buying into the NFL now, thanks to a net worth Forbes estimates at $7 billion. That figure is up dramatically from 2023, when he was believed to be worth $2.3 billion before being elected to a second term in the White House.

Since then, Trump's cryptocurrency ventures have brought in more than a billion dollars, while he's also expanded his real estate portfolio in the Middle East, according to financial disclosure forms.

Perhaps most importantly, the NFL's current ownership skews Republican, including staunch Trump supporters like the New York Jets' Woody Johnson and Jones.