'Monday Night Football' on ABC: One last drive
Turn out the lights, the party's over.
After a 36-year run, "Monday Night Football" will air its last touchdown Monday night on ABC. A change in the broadcast rights will move the second-longest-running primetime series to ESPN, leaving behind a legacy of memorable moments, high drama and well-known characters that will live on in TV history.
In its heyday, it seemed like everyone was watching. Not only did it showcase the best of America's most popular sport, it did it with style and drama. "Monday Night Football" revolutionized the way sports were shown on television -- but not just that: "Monday Night Football" revolutionized when sports were shown on television. Long before ESPN, "Monday Night Football" propelled them from weekend afternoons to primetime.
And just as important, it was must-see TV for the complex, combustible relationship among superstar commentator Howard Cosell and his two co-stars, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith and New York Giants halfback Frank Gifford. On Tuesday morning, Americans talked about the game, the highlights from the weekend's other matchups and what Meredith and Cosell had said the night before.
"Just those words, 'Monday Night Football,' and America knows what you're talking about," said Fred Gaudelli, who has been executive producer for five years.
For many reasons, "Monday Night Football" was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. And just as surprising, no one wanted it when it then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle shopped the idea to the three networks in 1969.
CBS and NBC preferred to stick with such existing hits as CBS' "Gunsmoke" and NBC's "Rowan & Martin's Laugh In." ABC, long the third-place network, wasn't happy about the idea, either. But it had more to lose. It was only after the league threatened to give the rights to the fledgling Hughes Television Service -- which could potentially steal ABC's affiliates, much like Fox would do to CBS 20 years later -- that ABC agreed.
"They didn't think it would fly in primetime," said Dennis Lewin, a longtime ABC Sports executive who was a producer on the first "Monday Night Football" on September 21, 1970. "It took the vision of Pete Rozelle and Roone Arledge to make it happen."
Arledge wrote a new playbook on how to televise football, pairing with NFL Films for highlights and convincing reluctant owners to let ABC Sports install cameras all over the field, two at the 50-yard line, one on each 25-yard line and at least one in each end zone, as well as several hand-helds. That, along with a groundbreaking association with NFL Films, gave ABC a clear edge in drawing not only the die-hard fan but the casual viewer.
"ABC showed the game in a much more intimate manner. It wasn't just close-ups, and it wasn't just slow motion," said Michael Maccambridge, author of "America's Game: The Epic Story of How Pro Football Captured a Nation." "It was a sense that this game is an event, and it (was) worth caring about. And if we care about it as a game, we can also care about and understand it as a drama."
That first game, between the Cleveland Browns and the New York Jets, showed just what kind of drama could be seen onfield for the first time. The cameras zeroed in on Jets quarterback Joe Namath, whose late-game rally ended in an interception and the loss of the game, 31-21. Namath -- hands on hips, head down, dejected -- personified the loss.
"Even if you weren't a sports fan, there were things on 'Monday Night Football' that you could care about," Maccambridge said.
The drama went on in front of and behind the camera in the interplay between Meredith and Cosell, who had chucked a law practice for a broadcasting career and had gained notice as a boxing announcer. But he became a megastar on Monday nights, when he held court on football, sports and the virtues of their host city as well as sparring with country boy Meredith.
"There's no question they were an instant hit. It became, as they like to say in later years, water-cooler conversation," Lewin said. "People couldn't miss what Meredith and Cosell, and later Gifford, would say."
It didn't take long for "Monday Night Football" to take off, earning an 18.5 rating/35 share in its first year. Restaurants close early on Monday, bowling leagues suffer, the movie business softens as Americans stay home on Monday nights. Tuesday, which many games spilled into on the East Coast because of the late starting times, becomes more popular than Monday for Detroit autoworkers to call in sick.
"Monday Night Football" even became an integral part of an episode of "The Bob Newhart Show" in the early 1970s, even though it aired on rival CBS, Maccambridge recalled.
There has been no shortage of action on the field, either. Not all of the games have been as superlative as the 45-3 Dolphins blowout of the Jets in 1983, or this year's 42-0 drubbing of the Philadelphia Eagles at the hands of the Seattle Seahawks, or the Washington Redskins' 48-47 loss to the Green Bay Packers in 1983, which also is the series' highest-scoring game.
There's the triumphant, embodied in Phil Simms' final pass to Lawrence Taylor in the same 1995 game in which the Giants retire his jersey. Or the Jets fourth-quarter comeback on October 23, 2000, from a 30-7 deficit to tie and later win the game in overtime. Name an NFL star of the past 36 years, and he has been here, often many times.
"Monday night is really your chance to shine. Your peers are watching, you know the nation is," said Joe Theisman, analyst for "Sunday Night Football" on ESPN who has played on "Monday Night Football" and appeared on the broadcast crew. "Careers have been made and not made on Monday night television. It carries that kind of significance."
It was one of those games, on November 18, 1985, that carried significance for Theisman, then the star quarterback for the Washington Redskins. He suffered a career-ending compound fracture in a tackle that was shown, in gruesome detail, live on "Monday Night Football." Theisman said he has never seen it despite it being replayed over and over on TV.
"It's probably one of the most unbelievable things to ever happen on Monday night, and it's one that most people remember," Theisman said. "I've never seen the shot. I've chosen not to look at them, and I haven't changed my mind."
Another dramatic moment occurred December 22, 2003, when Packers quarterback Brett Favre, a day after his father died, led his team to a 41-7 victory with 399 yards and four touchdowns. Gaudelli said that in his five years on "MNF," that's his most memorable game.
There have been some misfires as well. Comedian Dennis Miller joined the broadcast team in 2000 in a bold experiment in mixing humor and football; but after September 11, Miller had less to do and was replaced when play-by-play announcer Al Michaels was paired with analyst and former Oakland Raiders coach John Madden.
Cosell generated controversy wherever he went before quitting the broadcast in disgust in the early 1980s. And the always outspoken civil rights activist, a strong supporter of Muhammad Ali in his draft resistance in the 1960s, was excoriated after calling a black player "a little monkey."
Last year saw "Monday Night Football" in the news again, with a controversial opening sketch featuring Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens and "Desperate Housewives" co-star Nicolette Sheridan.
Ironically, while "Monday Night Football" became famous in the three-network world of the 1970s, it wasn't until the early 1980s when it cracked the top 10 for the season. And it wasn't until the '90s when it regularly took up residence there as overall broadcast network ratings declined. But "Monday Night Football" ratings have fallen in recent years, and earlier this year, ABC decided it wasn't ready for football anymore.
Next year, ESPN will have "Monday Night Football." For the first time, Sunday night will be the broadcast primetime identity for the NFL, on NBC. It just made more sense for ESPN, with its dual-revenue streams of advertising and subscriber fees, to get "Monday Night Football."
And it's true that "Monday Night Football," like most things on network TV, has been diminished by the 300-channel universe. It remained a tradition, but not as groundbreaking as it had been.
"When everybody starts broadcasting games the way 'Monday Night Football' did, then 'Monday Night Football' is not as exceptional and unique as it once was," Maccambridge said. "You can turn on ESPN 2 now and see the same techniques being used for the Kent State-Akron game."
Meredith used to sing, "Turn out the lights, the party's over," in the broadcast booth during games that weren't even close. And while Meredith won't be there in New York for the last broadcast, he and Gifford will both be a part of it.
While the loss of "Monday Night Football" on ABC is the end of an era, ESPN executives believe that it's just embarking on a new tradition.
Maccambridge believes that one of the show's lasting legacies is to give a higher profile to sports. Before "Monday Night Football," most sporting events on TV were relegated to weekend afternoons. But the NFL's success gave rise to baseball, the Olympics, the NCAA men's basketball championship in primetime and, eventually, ESPN and its revolution.
"The conventional wisdom on Madison Avenue was that pro football, or for that matter any sport, was too male, too marginal, too parochial to succeed on primetime network television," he said. "Then we see what happens: It's an instant hit, becomes a cultural phenomenon, Howard Cosell is this national icon and Don Meredith is much more popular retired than he ever was playing."
ESPN executive vp content John Skipper agrees.
"The NFL moving a game to primetime was clearly one of the catalysts of the revolution of sports being available everywhere, all the time, when you wanted it," he said. "I think you could point to it as one of the spots where all that started, where you proved that sports was social currency and mattered around the clock and around the dial."
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
