Monday Night Football

OK, I realize it's April and football season doesn't start till September, but bits of it become relevant throughout the year. I live, for all intents and purposes, in Jacksonville, home of the Jaguars of the National Football League. It's a small market team in a large market league where the glamor names are more like the Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers, although about now, both of those teams are struggling and face it, about the best thing the Cowboys have going for them is their cheerleaders. I'm also a pretty big Jaguars fan, having had season tickets since the team began playing in 1995.

Monday Night Football is the crown jewel of the NFL. It's the marquee game of the week. ABC, who televises it, gets to pick which game they want to show, looking for the best matchups and storylines (like a coach who changed teams playing against his old team, and things like that). Very often they pick wrong, and the teams they thought were going to be good when they made the schedule end up floundering and the games aren't all that great, but they also get a lot of them right. The point behind it though is, when they made the schedule, these were the games seen as most desirable of all the ones played that week. Teams want to play that game too. It's on national television instead of something more regional, so the whole country is watching your game.

Now to the point. The schedule for this fall just came out, and the Jaguars have no Monday night games. People are crying foul and whining about how, despite being one of the better teams in the league and improving, the Jaguars are being overlooked because they aren't one of the big name teams. The Cowboys are still playing Monday Night Football, and they flat out suck. Everyone wants to be on Monday Night Football, because it's the place to be.

Personally, I couldn't be happier. Monday Night Football is a made for television event. Before Jacksonville had a team, I loved Monday Night Football. It was a Monday night out with the guys in a sports bar somewhere. The game started at 9:00 and you'd watch while conversing about this and that. Rarely did you stay for the end, because you didn't care that much who won and besides, Tuesday morning came soon enough.

Now we have a team, and the reality of going to a game on a Monday night isn't all that glamourous. First there's work on Monday, which you have to rush home from to get to the game before you get stuck in traffic. Then there's the fact that my son and occasionally my wife accompany me to these games. Monday night, that time of year, is a definite school night, so the youngster can't go. The game doesn't end 'till after midnight and whenever it does end, you're downtown and need to get home in post game traffic. You aren't home before 1:00 (more like 1:30), and usually not in bed before 2:00 in the morning. Then there's the hell of Tuesday morning on no sleep at work, at which time any 'glamour' associated with attending a Monday Night Footbal game has definitely worn off. None of this is something I look forward to. A nice 1:00 Sunday afternoon start, over by 4:00 or 4:30 is a huge improvement where I'm concerned. If I lived on the west coast, where the same game starts at 5:00 and is over by 9:30, I'd be more inclined to be happy about going to a Monday night game, but I don't. So San Francisco, you can have those Monday night games. I'll take the 1:00 Sunday starts in September, when those teams from up north come down in their dark jerseys and sweat in the Florida sun, anytime.