Tonight, a longtime network legacy comes to an end. Monday Night Football will end a 35 year run on ABC and in 2006 move over to ESPN.
In this same move, the announcers for 2006 will be Al Michaels and Joe Theismann in the booth with Michele Tafoya and Suzy Kolber(the best sideline reporter in football today) serving as sideline reporters. John Madden has decided to go to NBC next year. I was hoping that the entire ESPN Sunday Night crew (Joe Theismann, Paul Maguire, Mike Patrick, and Suzy Kolber)would do Monday Night Football because in my personal opinion, they are the most entertaining, interesting, and cohesive announcing units in pro football today.
What killed Monday Night Football on network television. Boring blowout games? No, I really feel that professional wrestling on Monday night killed the popularity of Monday Night Football. The Monday Night Wars between WWF and WCW provided better television to watch than the blowout football games and that was just the start of the decline. I really believed that if the game was moved to Thursday Night, the ratings would have been better.
Monday Night Football was a cultural phenomeon with such things as November 27, 1978 when the San Francisco 49ers hosted the Pittsburgh Steelers when earlier in the day, San Francisco mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk had been murdered at City Hall. We also witnessed after 9-11-01 a game between Washington and Philadelphia when a fight occured in the stands over the Eagle’s bench and police used tear gas to stop the fight causing the Eagle bench to come out to mid field as the smoke cleared up.
We also witnessed Howard Cosell on December 8, 1980. (during a game between the Miami Dolphins and New England Patriots) break the news of famed Beatle John Lennon’s murder. In September 1983, Cosell referred to Redskins wide reciever Alvin Garrett as a “little monkey.” A documentary later revealed that Garrett was not offended and never saw the comment as racial. We saw in 1985 the ending of Joe Theismann’s career when Lawrence Taylor tackled Theismann and fell heavily on the quarterbackâs leg in the process creating a compound fracture of the tibia and fibula in his lower right leg.
We also saw the pregame skit in November 2004 when Terrell Owens appeared with popular TV actress Nicolette Sheridan in a skit where Owens responded to a naked Sheridan. We saw the miracle comeback of Joe Montana with the Chiefs. We saw Brett Farve’s performance against the Raiders after his father died. We saw Tony Dorsett in 1983 run a 99 yard touchdown against the Minnesota Vikings when the Vikings had 12 men on the field and later on, it was discovered that Dallas only had 10 men on the field. We even saw the New York Jets (J-E-T-S! JETS! JETS! JETS!) come back from a 30-7 deficit at the start of the fourth quarter to win the game 40-37. We also saw the 1985 Bear’s undefeated winning streak come to an end as Miami beat the Bears 38-24.
It provided us with great memories of Dandy Don singing ‘turn out the lights, the party’s over…’ Frank Gifford’s calling Dallas Cowboys defensive back Dennis Thurman as Thurman Munson, who had been killed in a plane crash less than two months before. Plenty of eye candy from Lesley Visser, Melissa Stark, Lisa Guerrero, Michelle Tafoya (did great work with ESPN and the NBA), and Sam Ryan. Eric Dickerson who sounded like he stuttered constantly and lest we not forget Dennis Miller.
What is so intriguing is that one team that played the first Monday Night Football game will also play in the last Monday Night Football game. The New York Jets when they play New England in an alcohol-free game.
My how time has changed. Oh well, we get to watch it on ESPN next year as I flip back and forth between it and Raw is War on the USA network.
