Monday Night Football - Notable Events

Notable Events

• The New York Jets and Cleveland Browns played in the first network broadcast of MNF in 1970, with the Browns winning 31–21. In the last network broadcast on December 26, 2005, the Jets lost to the New England Patriots; the final score was also 31–21.
• Monday Night Football was rarely defeated in the ratings during the 1970s. One such occasion was on October 28, 1974, when the Steelers–Falcons game was outdone by a heavily promoted episode of the CBS comedy Rhoda, in which Rhoda Morgenstern married Joe Gerard.
• On December 8, 1980, ABC News confirmed the shooting death of John Lennon during that evening's live MNF game between the New England Patriots and the Miami Dolphins (won by Miami 16–13). The first on-air announcement was made by Howard Cosell, who called it "an unspeakable tragedy."
• There have been three occasions in which two Monday night games were played simultaneously, resulting in split TV coverage:
  • In 1987, a scheduling conflict arose when Major League Baseball's Minnesota Twins went to Game 7 of the World Series (which also aired on ABC), making the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome unavailable for the Minnesota Vikings' scheduled game against the Denver Broncos that Sunday. The football game was subsequently moved to Monday night, and ABC aired it in the Twin Cities (KSTP) and Denver (KUSA) markets while the rest of the country got the regularly scheduled MNF game – the Los Angeles Rams/Cleveland Browns game in Cleveland (of note is that the Rams were originally based in Cleveland, and after moving to St. Louis, they would be the Browns' last opponent ever on the ABC program).
  • A similar scenario unfolded in 1997, when the Florida Marlins went to Game 7 of the World Series and the Miami Dolphins' Sunday game against the Chicago Bears at Pro Player Stadium was shifted to Monday night on WPLG in Miami and WLS-TV in Chicago (which marked a rare instance of the Dolphins wearing their road jerseys in a night home game, since the game was originally scheduled for Sunday afternoon – the Dolphins usually wear their home jerseys in night home games). The rest of the nation saw the Green Bay Packers/New England Patriots game from Foxboro, a rematch of Super Bowl XXXI (which would have aired on that game's network, Fox, had it been played on Sunday afternoon) – the only time that a rematch of the previous season's Super Bowl has aired on the program.
  • In 2010, the Vikings were forced to move a scheduled Sunday afternoon home game against the New York Giants after the roof of the Metrodome collapsed following a heavy snowfall. The game was moved to Ford Field in Detroit and played on Monday, December 13 at 7:20 p.m. EST, with Fox televising it only in the Giants and Vikings' TV markets. It was also available on the NFL Sunday Ticket package from DirecTV. The game, which the Giants won 21–3, also marked the end of Brett Favre's 297-game consecutive starts streak. The Baltimore Ravens and the Houston Texans met in the regularly scheduled game televised by ESPN, which the Ravens won 34–28 in overtime after blowing a 28–7 lead.
• In September 2005, the New Orleans Saints vacated from the Louisiana Superdome in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and were forced to move a scheduled Sunday afternoon home game against the New York Giants from New Orleans to Monday night at Giants Stadium. In a unique television doubleheader, the Saints–Giants game started at 7:30 p.m. Eastern and the first half aired on ABC; at 9 p.m. the game shifted to ESPN while ABC began its regularly scheduled MNF game of the Washington Redskins visiting the Dallas Cowboys (the Saints-Giants game was seen in its entirety in New York, Louisiana and other hurricane-affected areas on ABC, with the regularly scheduled MNF game shown on ESPN until the end of the first game). ABC and ESPN interspersed both games with an on-air telethon to raise money for aid to the hurricane's victims. The last two minutes of the second quarter and the entirety of the second half were not seen in Canada, as TSN, the cable network that held the rights to ESPN NFL games but not to MNF, chose instead to air WWE's Monday Night Raw (the highest rated show on basic USA cable), and ABC had switched to the start of the Dallas-Washington game. (TSN no longer has the rights to show Monday Night Raw and now shows all MNF games without interruption.)
• A change in the television contracts in 2006 prompted a significant change in the opening week. On September 11, 2006, the NFL staged its first scheduled Monday night doubleheader on the opening weekend of the season, with both games shown on ESPN. The Minnesota Vikings defeated the Washington Redskins, 19–16, in a game that started at 7 p.m. ET, and the San Diego Chargers topped the Oakland Raiders, 27–0, in a game that started at 10:15. ESPN broadcast a second doubleheader on September 10, 2007. The Cincinnati Bengals defeated the Baltimore Ravens, 27–20, followed by the San Francisco 49ers defeating the Arizona Cardinals, 20–17. The Cardinals–49ers game was delayed until 10:25 p.m. because the Ravens–Bengals game went beyond the allotted time. When the first game had still not ended by 10:25, the opening kickoff was moved to ESPN2. ESPN and ESPN2 simulcast roughly one minute of playing time of the second game immediately after the first game ended.