Live NFL Games
Prior to the 2012 season the NFL Network showed live games on Thursday nights beginning in mid-November. Starting with the 2012 season the network began televising one live Thursday night game each week beginning in Week Two and running through Week Fifteen (except for Thanksgiving Day), plus one live Saturday night game in Week Sixteen. The addition of these extra Thursday night games means that every NFL team now appears in at least one game on either NFL Network's Thursday Night Football, or in a Thanksgiving Day game, or in the season-opening kickoff game, each season. (The season opener is on the Thursday prior to Week One and is shown on NBC, while the Thanksgiving Day tripleheader games are shown on CBS, Fox and NBC).
As with the games broadcast by ESPN's Monday Night Football, they are also aired on broadcast TV in the primary media markets of the participating teams, although the home team's market broadcasts the game only if it is sold out 72 hours before game time.
When Thursday Night Football premiered, veteran TV announcer Bryant Gumbel was the play-by-play announcer, and former Fox and current NBC analyst Cris Collinsworth was color commentator. Collinsworth won the Sports Emmy for best game analyst for his work on the NFL Network telecasts. Dick Vermeil replaced Collinsworth for two games in 2006. Marshall Faulk and Deion Sanders replaced Collinsworth when needed in 2007.
In August 2007, the network televised the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New Orleans Saints due to NBC wanting to cover, the later canceled, preseason game in China.
The 2007 schedule began on Thanksgiving night, November 22, with a game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Atlanta Falcons in Atlanta's Georgia Dome. Gumbel and Collinsworth returned as the booth announcers.
Bob Papa, also the radio voice of the New York Giants on WFAN, announced the games starting in 2008. Matt Millen, former general manager of the Detroit Lions, was named Collinsworth's replacement at the same time. Former Washington Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann joined Papa and Millen in the booth for the 2010-11 season. In May 2011 it was announced that Brad Nessler and Mike Mayock would serve as the network's new game announcers.
These games are also broadcast on Westwood One Radio in the United States and Canada, by Sky Sports in the United Kingdom, and usually by Rogers Sportsnet in Canada.
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Famous quotes containing the words live and/or games:
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—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“In the past, it seemed to make sense for a sportswriter on sabbatical from the playpen to attend the quadrennial hawgkilling when Presidential candidates are chosen, to observe and report upon politicians at play. After all, national conventions are games of a sort, and sports offers few spectacles richer in low comedy.”
—Walter Wellesley (Red)