Monday Night football was once the only place to ease your football cravings after Sunday's games.
MNF was the only game in town, a weekly larger-than-life event which helped turned football into what it is today. Back then, with most television viewers only having three basic networks, MNF was a dominant force, even if, for a while, it would finish around No. 18 in the rankings and lose its time slot to sitcoms such as One Day at a Time.Snoozer games Once upon a time, MNF got the best games. Usually starting with the Super Bowl match up from the previous years and working its way through divisional rivalries and potential play-off match ups. Now they get third-rate games. Obviously the games are set based on the schedule and last year's results but the 2-7 Baltimore versus the 2-8 Browns*? Come on. They don't even show that game in the sports bars in Hell.
* I suppose they could each have three wins when they actually met on November 30th.
Too late Even if it is an exciting shootout or dramatic nail biter, the games start so late that most of the show demographic cannot really stay up late to watch the end, especially on those double header season openers.
Sunday and Thursday night Schedule spread out too far Before Thursday Night Football, the most advantage a team would have was having a bye week before their Monday night appearance. Now it is theoretically possible that, in order to meet the required schedule of two against your division, etc. a team will play Thursday night, have a bye and then appear on MNF (thus having a longer span between games) against a team that played the previous Thursday (thus having a much shorter span between games).
Other First World concerns Nothing like having to wait until the end of the MNF so that you can officially be declared the winner of your fantasy football pool, because you never know, that kicker might have scored a couple of touchdowns on blown plays. Worse yet, you don't get to do any tweaking to your line up until Tuesday, which only gives you essentially three days until TNF. (I know this is a really weak point but I'm throwing it in here anyway). In conclusions, I think we need to move football back to a weekend only thing with the weekend beginning on Thursday night. Leave Monday for sitcoms, reality shows and documentaries like God intended.
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