John Madden is switching teams again.

The colorful color commentator has announced he's leaving his long-coveted gig at ABC's Monday Night Football and bolting to NBC at the start of the 2006-07 season. Madden will call games for the Peacock on Sundays as part of the net's new six-year, $3.6 billion pact with the National Football League.

The move comes just weeks after the NFL announced NBC had acquired the rights to Sunday night games, and ABC had handed off the MNF franchise to sibling cable network ESPN, which had broadcast the Sunday contests, in an eight-year, $8.8 billion deal.

There was immediately speculation on what would become of the MNF team of Madden and veteran play-by-play man Al Michaels, especially since ESPN has an established three-man booth of Mike Patrick, Joe Theismann and Paul Maguire. There is no immediate word on whether Michaels will follow Madden out the door or whether EPSN will revamp its booth. In addition to his MNF gig, Michaels is also ABC's lead NBA play-by-play announcer.

Financial terms of Madden's six-year deal were not disclosed.

With the 69-year-old commentator jumping to NBC, he will have made the rounds of every broadcast net that has carried the NFL.

After coaching the Oakland Raiders to victory over the Minnesota Vikings in the 1977 Super Bowl, he gave up football for a lucrative career as a game analyst, partnering with Pat Summerall for 13 years at CBS. Beginning in 1994, the popular duo went to Fox for seven years when that network won a bidding war over CBS for NFL games.

After Fox demoted Summerall in 2002, Madden teamed up with Michaels at ABC, where he's been for the past three seasons.

"I have been doing this a long time and when I went to ABC to do Monday Night Football, I thought I would finish my career there," the boisterous broadcaster said in a statement. "But when the NFL did this new television deal, I looked at NBC's Sunday Night Football package, and I thought this really fits me well."

NBC was quick to trumpet its score.

"John Madden is the best analyst in the history of the National Football League and, in my opinion, the best analyst of any kind in sports television history," Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports & Olympics said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. "John is much more than a football legend, he's an American icon."

Aside from his Super Bowl ring, Madden has won 14 Sports Emmys for his years of exuberant analysis. He also earned points with younger generations of football fans by lending his name Electronic Arts' hugely popular Madden NFL Football, which ranks as the best-selling sports videogame franchise of all time, having sold 43 million copies since hitting store shelves back in 1989.

NBC, which has been without the NFL since 1998, has found itself struggling on Sundays against rival networks' football coverage. Its new deal also includes Super Bowls, in 2009 and 2012.