NBC football is ready for post-lockout play

BEVERLY HILLS | Are you ready for some football?

Sure seems that way. And that’s great news if you work on “Sunday Night Football,” TV’s most-watched prime-time show in the fall (i.e., the months “American Idol” isn’t on).

NBC brought the show’s top talent to the TV critics tour on Monday, including Al Michaels, boothmate Cris Collinsworth and Michele Tafoya, who’s an old hand on the sidelines with “Monday Night Football” but will be spending her first season with NBC’s Sunday games.

Naturally, critics wanted to know if the gang ever worried that there wasn’t going to be a season?

The consensus answer: Nahhhh.

“(The owners) understood they had to get something done,” Michaels said.

“We certainly prepared as if there was going to be a season,” said Michaels’ boss, Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBC Sports.

That said, there was a Plan B, which Lazarus wouldn’t reveal but which I’m guessing involved a huge order of “Community” episodes.

Michaels thought the between-season strife between players and owners would soon be forgotten by all and have “no impact” on the game.

Collinsworth disagreed.

“There will be a direct benefit to all of us in the football business,” he said. “If it had gone on another couple of weeks, it would have had the exact opposite effect. People would have turned their backs on it …

“It ended just in time. And what happened, because they had to cram all the signings and the free agency (news) together, for three days that’s all we’ve been talking about.”

Collinsworth and Co. will be in Kansas City on Nov. 27 when the Chiefs are host to the Steelers. Fans with long memories might know this will be his second Thanksgiving-weekend Chiefs game, the first being his pairing with the not-ready-for-prime-time Bryant Gumbel on NFL Network.

“When a new team gets on ‘Sunday Night Football,’ the stadium atmosphere is outrageous,” Collinsworth said. “And if they’ve got a good team going into that game, it might be the most exciting atmosphere of the season.”

He thinks that could happen.

“They’ve got in Jamaal Charles one of the most exciting players in the league. He just doesn’t get talked about because he’s in Kansas City. I can’t wait.”