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What I had suspected during the NFL preseason was verified last night. Monday Night Football (MNF) as we knew and loved it is dead. Believe me, I don’t want this to be true either. Since I can remember, every Monday night during the Fall, I spent in front of the TV watching the greatest sporting event of each week. Football under the lights, great teams, great announcers, a primetime show. What could be better? A year or so ago, when I heard that ESPN was going to be doing the Monday night games instead of ABC, I was quite frankly shocked. MNF has been a staple of ABC’s programming for 35 years. I was optomistic however, seeing that ESPN had done a good job of the Sunday night games in previous seasons with fantastic camera work and solid knowledge of the game.

I watched the preseason versions of both NBC’s Sunday night coverage and ESPN’s MNF and gave ESPN the benefit of the doubt, maybe they were just working out the kinks. After last night, the first regular season games, I can tell you that Monday Night Football is dead. ESPN has taken a guaranteed success and dropped the ball. It is as if ESPN took what worked so well for them in the past and turned up the volume WAY too high. Too many sideline reports, too many fancy cameras, and a truly HORRIBLE booth team of Joe Theismann, Mike Tirico, and Tony Kornheiser. Theismann is more arrogant than ever, constantly ripping into quarterbacks, as if he knew it all when he played. Tirico is knowledgable but quite frankly boring. However, it is Kornheiser who truly sinks the ship. Consistently negative and insisting on frequently, and at inappropriate times, quoting decade old television and movies. That wouldn’t even be so bad if the quotes came from anything remotely recent. He is a writer not a commentator, an out of touch one at that, and it shows.

So what happened to all the MNF talent?

NBC moved in to take over ESPN’s Sunday night slot and smartly picked up former MNF announcers John Madden and Al Michaels. When I watched the Sunday night games, much to my surprise, NBC has the better coverage, better announcers, and thanks to a flexible schedule deal with the NFL, better games. Let’s look at the facts: ESPN paid $1.1 billion for MNF. NBC paid $600 million for Sunday nights. ESPN got a fixed schedule that cannot be changed if a matchup that looked great before the season doesn’t pan out to be exciting or important. NBC gets to choose its game a couple weeks in advance so it can ensure a great and relevant matchup. ESPN paid big money for MNF, NBC paid about half and spent a little more bringing in the best talent available.

Someone at NBC deserves a promotion for negotiating a superior deal and then working hard to make the presentation right. Thanks to them, Sunday night is truly the new Monday. After the shock wears off, we, or at least I, will be fine. For instance, Sunday night’s much hyped, Manning vs. Manning game was actually very entertaining. In fact, I can’t wait for next week.

So in the end I say a tearful good bye to MNF. We will miss you… Well, maybe we will just watch you a day early.

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