Another one that I miss (although it’s still around…but different).
Monday Night Football (of old)-
Yeah, I know that with a zillion channels today we can get all the games we want during football season. But back then, in the 1970s, Monday evenings were SPECIAL. We couldn’t wait for the big feature that was the halftime highlights. Now we think nothing of getting highlight footage all day every day, but not in those days. Monday night games were something else.
It was started as an experiment with just a few games planned, but this programming would soon gain widespread success. Monday Night Football became a phenomenon on Monday nights in the fall. Monday evening attendance at movie theaters dropped and bowling leagues began to be shifted to Tuesday nights. A longstanding rumor was that a Seattle hospital came up with an unwritten rule that there were to be no births during Monday night game times….probably hard to enforce that one.
We didn’t want anything to interfere with our Monday evening schedule because we were 
focused on Monday night football. Today, with all of the incredible graphics, Hank Williams, Jr. bringing all of his rowdy friends over, and amazing high definition on my small 55” screen, somehow that still doesn’t match the magic that was Monday Night Football. With Howard Cosell (who we loved to hate), Frank Gifford, and “Dandy” Don Meredith, it was the first prime-time football that we had seen and we loved it! Does anyone besides me remember just staring at the TV and yelling, “Howard, would you just shutup??!
One of the infrequent sad, but vivid MNF memories was on December 8, 1980, when announcer, Howard Cosell, broke from his game coverage to announce the shooting and death of John Lennon. In today’s cable TV world, I’m not sure that announcement would have ever been made in the middle of an NFL game as it was that evening. However, it was, and all of the Beatles’ fans mourned.
But, for 99% of the time, our dreaded Mondays, whether we were at work or in school, were made a little bit brighter knowing that the evening would bring us Monday Night Football.
We planned for it. We got snacks ready for it. We were there for it. And, yeah, sometimes there were blowouts, and other times nail biters. Either way, we were glad that Monday Night Football had arrived. And it has stayed a while.
bsloan