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NFL Legend Turns ‘Lake America’ Into A Browns Broadcast Punchline

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Lake Ontario
Photo Credit: "Lake Ontario Shore Line" by Mustang Joe is marked with CC0 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/?ref=openverse.

Al Michaels was only a few snaps into his first NFL broadcast of the season when a lake shot from Cleveland gave him room to needle President Donald Trump’s newest naming fight.

The 81-year-old announcer, now in his 41st year as a play-by-play voice, was working Amazon Prime Video’s Patriots-Browns preseason game with Kirk Herbstreit when the broadcast moved from football to the water beside Huntington Bank Field.

“That is Lake Erie. We think it is still called Lake Erie… We’re not quite sure at this point,” Michaels said.

The joke landed three minutes and 21 seconds into New England’s preseason trip to Cleveland, but Michaels did not leave it on the shoreline.

His first regular-season Thursday Night Football assignment is set for Sept. 19, with the Detroit Lions visiting the Buffalo Bills near Lake Ontario.

“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 continued.

“Anyway, you know what I’m talking about… Read the news.”

The news was hard to miss. Trump had signed an executive order changing Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” using an Oval Office setup that included a Great Lakes map with “Lake America” written in large red letters over Lake Ontario and another display reading “MAKING THE GREAT LAKES EVEN GREATER.”

The order sends Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to the Geographic Names Information Service to update the lake’s name. The White House had already shown Trump marking a map earlier in the week, crossing out Lake Ontario and replacing it with Lake America.

“We’re going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario effective immediately to Lake America. That’s going to take place right now as I sign the order,” Trump said.

For a broadcaster opening the season from another Great Lake, the timing gave Michaels an easy target. Trump had announced the Lake America move days after unveiling a 50 percent tariff on Canadian autos and steel set to begin next year, and less than a week after a possible trade deal with Canada fell apart.

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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the change by tying Lake Ontario to its older name and meaning.

“The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.’ The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America,” Carney said in a statement.

Carney said Canadians know “naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario — then, now and always.”

Trump denied that the order was designed as a message to Canada, but he used the signing to accuse the country of taking advantage of the United States on trade and military protection.

“As you know, Canada has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly,” Trump said. “Even the military, you know, we defend Canada for nothing. We don’t get anything. They don’t pay us to defend Canada, but we defend Canada, and they understand that.”

Trump also said Canada wants to use 11 new U.S. icebreakers without paying, and claimed the United States has lost an average of $60 billion a year to Canada over the last 15 years.

The president treated the lake order as a follow-up to his earlier Gulf of Mexico change, saying the idea had been on his mind.

“So, the lake change, the Lake of America, was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” Trump said. “Actually, as you know, we took something called the Gulf of Mexico, we changed it, and now it’s very routinely the Gulf of America.”

By the time Michaels joked that Lake Erie might not be safe, Trump had already mused about going bigger than either a gulf or a lake.

“If you think about it, we have a gulf, and we have a lake. Now, all we need is an ocean,” Trump said. “So, maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.”

The political jokes were not limited to the broadcast booth.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers posted on X that he had “just renamed Lake Michigan Lake Wisconsin,” with video of himself writing on a napkin.

“See, I can sign napkins that say things, too,” Evers wrote.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker aimed at Trump property rather than another body of water, saying he would “rename” Trump Tower as “Natalie Tower.”

The label pointed to Natalie Harp, Trump’s 35-year-old “executive assistant,” after Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff said Trump did not want to do the job and instead wanted to “build his ballroom and travel with Natalie.”

Michaels’ Lake Erie aside was not the only NFL-TV moment crossing into off-field headlines Thursday.

Tony Romo, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and CBS analyst, spoke through a representative to TMZ after a July 23 stop in Milwaukee led to an OWI charge.

Police pulled Romo, 46, over in his Jeep before the charge, and bodycam footage drew attention as CBS weighed his future and his $18 million-a-year contract.

“Tony accepts full responsibility for his actions and has taken proactive steps to ensure that this isolated civil matter is properly resolved,” Romo’s spokesperson told TMZ.

CBS placed Romo on indefinite leave and temporarily replaced him with JJ Watt. His spokesperson said Romo is dealing with local authorities and CBS while the case and his broadcast future remain unresolved.

“We are working with local authorities to bring this matter to a close and we are communicating with CBS about next steps,” the spokesperson added.

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