MD5eahawks":1nmm3c3k said:
In the past, Monday Night Football was made up of games featuring playoff teams from the previous year. That was the only way to get a prime time game. Then ESPN started televising Sunday Night Football. The stipulation there was that every team had to be covered with at least one game. This went well for a while. Things changed a bit when parity sunk in and some of those playoff teams weren't as good as they were the year before. MNF started featuring some crappy games while some of the better matchups were on Sunday afternoon. So the NFL swapped MNF and SNF. This allowed for the flexing of key games to a prime time slot while also featuring all teams in prime time for MNF. ESPN tries guessing what the better games will be for Monday night when they make their schedule.
Monday was about marketing and getting the product to the public on prime time, Not always a playoff team but marketing teams with a great fan base many times against others that were up and coming. Pete Rozelle was great at expanding the league marketing it and getting TV revenue as the main stay in supporting the league. Add to that ABC was very astute at creating a broadcast booth with three people, this happened I believe after the first season and we seen Cosell, Meredith and Gifford become the mainstays delivering a non typical type broadcast for the show which took off big time and the viewership exploded, fans were shown and as well as Highlights from the weeks games with Cosell Narrating.
Additionally weird stuff seemed to happen on Monday night which brought another unexpected aspect, add Celebrities visiting the booth and other weekly differences and it was a mainstay for many, many years till the loss of Cosell. He was not a Broadcaster by trade but a Lawyer and had a unique take and delivery for the day which worked. They had replaced Meredith over the years with several retired players Dierdorf being one that worked. But they could not replace the magic Cosell brought.
Disney bought ABC and moved the telecast to ESPN off of Network TV. They could never replace the magic of the original crew and tried to force things which was apparent and failed badly. Gruden made it work somewhat with Berman recently but it was not special anymore.
