The DUMBEST IDEA in Monday Night Football HISTORY
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- čas přidán 2. 12. 2021
- In 2003, with the ratings for Monday Night Football declining, NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue proposed an idea to ABC to try and increase the ratings. The only problem? This idea was so mind-numbingly stupid, to the point where not a single entity involved would've benefitted from it. This is the story behind the stupidest idea in the history of Monday Night Football, and how Paul Tagliabue nearly destroyed the product with this horrible idea
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The reason why MNF decrease in late 90's was bad announcing , and the Monday night wrestling wars. Football was not going to admit they were losing to wresting.
This is an incredibly stupid take
No it isn’t; at that time the Monday Night Wars in wrestling, and the aftermath after WWF/E bought WCW, had higher ratings than MNF, in an era where an entire season of MNF was so bad no team scored over 30 points in any game and many were snoozefests. Bringing in Dennis Miller “backfired” only because that first season Miller was there almost every game was crazy or interesting, and went down to the wire-much like many of the prime time games this season have been.
Nope....Monday wrestling ratings were HUGE in the 90's
New new new worrlld orderr
For lyyffe . Ahh nostalgia
While Dennis Miller was dreadful with his whole obnoxious obscure referencr schtick, bad football and wrestling is why those ratings sank.
I won't hold one dumb idea by Tagliabue against him, seeing as Goodell comes up with a dumb idea every week seemingly.
Everyone can have dumb ideas. Tagliabue for the most part was a great Commissioner.
@@MNsportsnut and he wasn't power-hungry like Goodell was
@@rileykazama3145 That's for sure.
@@rileykazama3145 Nor did he hand down over the top penalties like Roger.
@@notoriouseagle1074 that is so true
It is worth mentioning that pro wrestling was the hot ticket on Monday nights in the late 90s. Well over 10 million people were watching WWF Raw and WCW Nitro over MNF back then
When nitro and raw was on commercial u watched mnf. That what i did
I was gonna say, Raw was mentioned, but for a time from around 96 to 98-early 99, Nitro was as big and for a while bigger. And once they both went to 2 hours min (3 sometimes for Nitro) from early 97 onward, MNF had even bigger competition than before.
Also, the ratings from the Dennis Miller era were probably bad.
@@lsusaints36horton45 how can anyone watch that fake gay wwf WCW shit.
@@jasonjgr8580 the only thing gayer is the porn you secretly watch on your phone.
What's interesting is that NOBODY mentions what really contributed to the decline in Monday Night Football by the late-90's: It was unrestricted free agency/increased player turnover, the salary cap, and the subsequent parity that took shape across the NFL as we know it, today.
Back in the 70's and 80's, there were none of those things in the NFL. Player turnover was very minimal. So when the schedule came out (usually based on a teams performance the previous season), it was a safe bet to schedule teams on MNF late-season knowing that that late-season game was guaranteed to have major playoff implications, or at least, winning teams.
The NFL's current formula of parity makes it more unpredictable in scheduling Monday night games (and still achieving maximum ratings), whereas Sunday games can be more easily flexed.
Man, the WWF/E and WCW were destroying MNF in the ratings with their Monday night shows at the turn of the century. No one watched football on Monday nights cuz everyone wanted to see who The Rock was gonna call a jabroni this week lol
Nowadays Blah is getting cremated in the ratings even WHEN it isn't football season
@@donaldpaluga All pro wrestling is. That industry is on its last legs. Even AEW hardly gets any viewers because it promotes "wokeism".
Eh Wrestling has always had huge peaks and valleys before and after the advent of television. It always makes a come back, it will again.
And now Monday Night football will have two games anyway (one on ESPN, the other on ABC).
Whoever thought that was a good idea really should be fired.
In particular whoever represented the other networks in negotiations.
In 2010 Vikings Giants was moved to Monday Night so the teams could go to Detroit after the Metrodome roof collapse. Started an hour earlier than Texans/Ravens but still went head to head. They gave out free tickets to residents of the Detroit area who then went in and booed the home team Vikings
Was the end of the Favre consecutive start streak
The Vikings are worthy of hating. Lions fans have to pretend to contend
Not to mention Frank, that rescheduled Vikings/Giants Metrodome to Detroit was shown only on the local Fox Stations in Metro New York City, Minneapolis/St Paul and I think Detroit. Heard that Goodell tried to also have that Vikings -Giants game simulcast on the NFL Network as well. However ESPN said NO.
FYI because of that roof collapse it basically forced a deal between the Vikings and the state of Minnesota to end up building what is now US Bank Stadium which opened about 6-7 years later.
@@americangiant1003 The NFL ended up replaying the Giants/Vikings game at midnight that night
@@donkeyfong You mean that rescheduled Vikings/Giants game in Detroit was replayed on NFL Network at Midnight that evening right?
You mixed the biggest reason of all.
If there was no flex scheduling under the "Two games on Monday nights" proposal, the network might have been stuck one week with two games, both of which could have had two last place teams already out of playoff contention, because the schedule would have been locked up in advance.
In the 2000s, good teams were different than the 90s. We had the Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco 49ers and Green Bay Packers. In the 2000s, we had St. Louis Rams, Tennessee Titans, Tampa Bay Bucs, Baltimore Ravens, New England Patriots. ABC was thinking that the good teams of the 90s would be good in the 2000s.
Put Monday Night Football back on ABC and end Dancing with the C-Listers.
America's Cruelest Home Videos is still going, that could be here for a while.
Actually starting next Fall for the 2022 season, several more (not all)MNF games on ESPN will also shown on ABC. Kind of the same current setup where out of the 14 games of Thursday Night Football on NFL Network about 1/2 of the games are also shown on Fox. However starting next season in ‘22, the Thursday games will only be seen on Amazon not counting Opening Night and The Thanksgiving Holiday Triple header of games.
@@americangiant1003 They really had to justify paying the extra money, somehow.
Castle was the only show I liked on that network that aired on Monday nights.
@@fromthehaven94 Nathan Filion makes, The Rookie, truly, so, much better than it has any right to be.
The biggest ratings problem for MNF is Tuesday mornings. When so many viewers were college students or 20-somethings with part time jobs, staying with the Monday night games to the final gun was natural. In a few years, they have the 9-to-5 job, and if the score is 38-10 midway in the 3rd Q, it’s lights out.
I forgot the Rams went from being the Greatest Show on Turf to being very bad in less than 4 years.
And what really is amazing is that Roger Goodell makes Tagliabue look like a Rhodes Scholar.
Another thing: every team gets one primetime game a year between the three primetime slots. What if your team's only primetime game was the Monday Night "B" game... especially if you're an out of market fan without Sunday Ticket?
That rule's changed now that there's so many primetime/national games. Kickoff, 3x Thanksgiving, 15x Thursday, 17x Monday, 18x Sunday. 54 total primetime games with 108 (nice) slots for teams. Any three teams in the league can have a maximum of six, the rest a maximum of five.
And of course there's the stuff like the International Series which air super early, and the times CBS or FOX have a single nationally televised game in the late slot.
Awesome video! This was a fantastic job of reporting on NFL and MNF-TV history. Love the "Reasons This Idea Was Bad" board. The whole video was excellent
In 2002, Monday Night Football ratings were lower than if you spiked the ball into the ground on every single play.
2:19 Dennis Miller: "Hey babe, bringing in that guy was the worst idea since Neville Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler in '38 with the Munich agreement, woo hoo"
*LMAO!!! YOU HAVE HIM DOWN PERFECTLY!!! EVERYTHING HE SAID WAS JUST LIKE THAT!!!*
The Daily Show played an "audition tape" of Miller that was a riot. "Al, he just went around the corner like Kip Winger chasing a can of Aquanet...I haven't seen a defense collapse like that since Kemal Ataturk capitulated to the Austro-Hungarians." ... "Oh, nice pass Magoo. You're using a rattlesnake for a necktie. Good luck on your GED, Oppenheimer."
Craziest thing is they’re going to do something like that this upcoming season
Personally I think Thursday night football should be done away with. London games too.
While I think there were challenges, they were not as large or real as what you stated.
1) You don’t have any issues with Madden. You sit down the week before the two games and figure out which one you are going to air nationwide. John and Al get assigned to that game. He still gets what he wanted.
2) Because of the ability to plan foe the games in advance you don’t even have to completely double your production costs as you do full cost for the game that deemed the prime one and partial production cost for the other. Costs will go up but not nearly double (and if you are creative it can even be controlled more):
3) You don’t seem to realize the power the NFL had then and now. They took away a game for Sunday night football, they eventually took away a game for Thursday night, this was well within the wheel house of NFL power over Fox and CBS.
4) Your likelihood of both games being a dud is very low. Now even two great teams can create a blowout, so that’s not what you can call a dud. A dud are the games that have no reason to watch because the teams aren’t in the playoff hunt. The chance that before the season you couldn’t pick between games and appropriately find two games and have both of them not be critical is very low. Take this year for instance. You would have taken Packers games, Buccaneers games, BIlls games, Tennessee games, Cowboys games, Steelers games, Browns games, Ravens games, Chiefs games, rivalry games, etc. and you wouldn’t have been wrong and the closest would have been the browns and Steelers but still good games.
5) You also fail to acknowledge the increase in ratings that could have happened may have been well worth it to ABC. If you can boost ratings by 10-20%, that may be enough to lure advertisers and offset those additional costs.
The late 90s in WWF, Stone Cold and the Attitude Era, the peak of WWF, and the peak of WCW.
Couldn't they just schedule 2 Monday Night games and then let ABC decide which to broadcast. This would have to be done in advance because of CBS/FOX contracts. They kind of do this now with NBC Sunday Night Football getting to flex games toward the end of the season.
Starting in 2023, Monday Night Football flexing will officially be a thing for the last six weeks. It’s a welcome change.
Also, in 2005 the NFL rescheduled the Giants-Saints game to Monday night in the Meadowlands because of Katrina, and aired it on ABC/ESPN. Game kicked off at 7:30 ET and then ABC switched to the regular game at 9 ET, so we eventually did have the two-Monday night games at the same time on national TV.
In 2014, the Bills-Jets game scheduled for then Ralph Wilson Stadium was moved to Monday night at Ford Field in Detroit due to the storm known as "Snowvember," which buried areas south of Buffalo with 6 to 7 feet of snow in 24 hours. The game was shown on CBS, IIRC, but only to Buffalo and New York.
You could've ended it right at 3:45 and gone straight to Tagliabue's ill fated idea...the games just weren't as good. Too many blowouts and mediocre teams. Hell, that's what continues to plague MNF in today's environment.
Along with TNF & SNF. Hell just last night, the Cowboys crushed WFT 56-14. The game was already decided 1/2 way through the FIRST QUARTER.
MNF always had at least a couple of awful matchups every season, just because there's no foolproof way to predict what every team's record will be before every season. That was never an issue until turn of the century. I'm old enough to remember when things started to go bad, and it was for reasons that nobody could've fixed. In fact the harder people tried the worse it got. Even as far back as 2000, some people weren't going to watch even if it was a great game between the best teams in the league.
The best fix is flex scheduling, but that's not happening across days. The other best fix is to make sure there's less garbage matchups in general, and don't expect the ginger to do that.
Also due to a Bills game in 2014 there was:
Jets @ Bills and
Ravens @ Saints
Both on Monday
There WERE occasions during the regular season while John Madden worked for either CBS or Fox when games he called were televised nationally to every TV market.
They were either Thanksgiving Day or a late season Saturday afternoon game that would've featured a Grade-A matchup.
Who else saw the title of this video and thought this was about Dennis Miller?
Not me, considering he was censored, the show apparently did just great.
I also thought about Rush Limbaugh
@@blacksheep25251 I thought that was ESPN Sunday NFL Countdown, but, maybe, I'm, somehow, misremembering facts, it's possible.
That idea came around with tnf addition for nfl ten in '07 after the sorry ass teams that didn't deserve a prime time game whined about wanting a prime time game. And that is why tnf gets the worst of the worst teams like jets or jags get banned to. At least lions don't get any tnf spots since they have thanksgiving day game to stink things up. Only thing worse is those lovely london games where they get to see loser match-ups like jags/phins and jets falcons every year since nfl would never send any top match-ups ratings-type games over there for a 9:30 a m crowd, 6:30 a m on the west coast like when raiders played there a few years ago.
SO...the NFL finally decided to put Tags in the HOF last year after refusing to do it for nearly a decade and a half despite him CLEARLY being better than Goodell and arguably even better than Rozelle. all because there just wasn't enough "drama" in the league when he was in charge? At least that's *one* thing that went right in 2020.
Calling it now, Roger Goodell will get inducted because some law requires Commisioners to get in, don't laugh, Bud Selig, eventually, got enshrined, too.
@@matthewdaley746 Yeah, some "law" that gets made up on the spot after never existing before. Kinda like what governments worldwide are doing every week.
Tags deserves it for not letting EA hog the NFL license & allowing the NFL BLITZ series to thrive with late hits (the rebooted one was decent, but felt bland)
@@DolFan316 The very same definition.
@@Venom3254 That appears shamefully notorious.
2003 was also a bad year for quarterbacks. Manning, Brady, McNabb, and Favre was all there basically was. Don’t talk to me about McNair. He was not must see TV.
Hey JG9, just found your "Hall of Fame, yes or no" hub on Reddit. Lots of great information and unique perspectives. Interesting to see everyones thoughts. Thanks for all your NFL related content.
The qb rating for that idea was 29.2 which is worse than if you spiked the idea on every play.
Dennis Miller was the worst MNF move ever made. That was terrible and hard to listen to.
There's just football on too many days
MNF's dumbest idea:
Dennis Miller
I remember that 03 Charger game 11:37 it was moved to Phoenix because of wildfires . I worked at the Qualcomm stadium and was notified earlier that week the game was moving because the parking lot was being used for emergency fire response
I didn't think it was possible to find an idea that was worse than the hiring of Dennis Miller!
Rush Limbaugh
I think that Sunday night football was ruined by NBC when they marched in, dictating their own terms in 2005 or 2006. I don't remember which year it was.
But I do remember that NBC was allowed to dictate to ESPN that they could not air NFL Primetime anymore; at least not in it's existing format. Primetime was a fantastic wrap-up show for the day which showed highlights of every game from the day. NBC, or specifically Dick Ebersol, was allowed to storm in like an elephant and tell ESPN that they couldn't air that show any more.
Then NBC was allowed to introduce "flex" scheduling; which allowed them to grab whatever game they wanted away from Fox and CBS to move to prime time on Sunday night. This was outrageously unfair to the other networks, and a nuisance to ticket holders to games. How many friggin Dallas Cowboys games does NBC want to flex onto Sunday nights?
And I suspect that NBC was behind the rule which made the final week of the regular season be exclusively divisional match-ups so that NBC could grab the best one of the bunch for their Sunday night game. That is ridiculous over-kill. I liked it when the Giants would play an AFC team, or an out of division team, on the final weekend of the season.
Before NBC came along, the Sunday night game on TNT or ESPN was a calmer, more niche game to watch to end the day. NBC wanted the Sunday night game to be the Super Bowl every single week. Well, it doesn't work that way. Throwing that much hype into every single weekend just creates burnout - which is what I felt towards the Sunday night game eventually. I can't get hyped for a circus every single week.
The idiots didn't realize that moving MNF from broadcast TV to cable, would KILL the casual viewer, when cable wasn't that prominent. I for one quit because I refused to both pay for a service and have that service bombard me with advertisements as well. One, or the other, but not both. So, since it moved from broadcast, I haven't seen MNF since. Haven't missed it either.
Not every idea is a good one.
I’m gonna say something very obvious to other subscribers who would back me up on, I honestly think you need to put your resume into getting a job with anything related to history of pro football. Doesn’t matter the era, it seems video after video there is nothing but incredible facts, videos(s), clips, historical data, comparing teams from decades ago to teams now. I mean I can go on. Please, as a die hard fan of your knowledge of the game apply for a job in the NFL’s history department.
Do a vid about Paul Tagliabue's idea of making the players play random positions based on pulling cards out of a hat, matching their jersey numbers. Thankfully this was abandoned after only a month. Who can forget Kevin Gogan playing QB? Or Eddie Murray as middle linebacker? And Jerry Rice at Right Tackle? Good times...lol
That sounds so bad, you got an article on this? I'd love to read about this
@@Davehhhh 😂🤣😅🤣😂😅 it's just a gag, lol. It never happened, lol 😀👍
@@diaz5292 Hmmm... Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
@@scotttaylor1051 stop stealing my jokes, Benji...lol
@@diaz5292 thank God!
They seemed determined to make Monday Night Football less special around this time. Eventually they decided the best way to kill MNF was to move it to Cable. That one was more on Disney than on the NFL, but the NFL let them do it without any push back. Sunday Night Football just isn't the same prestige as having your Marquee game 20 hours after the other games are all over. Having Prime time Thursday night football 3 days later makes it seem less significant too. But Having a Monday night game on Cable sure ain't the same.
On an unrelated note, I have a difficult time deciding if I like Dumb Decisions or In Defense Of better.
I love hearing JG9 get heated with some of the dumb decisions he reports on, especially when it seems plainly obvious even from the couch or the bar that the damn coach done lost his mind. But that said, I also love the critical thinking and the reporting behind In Defense Of. Rocket Screen will always stand out to me because of how compelling JG9's arguments in defense of Joe Gibbs making that decision in Super Bowl XVIII were.
Regardless of series, or even if it's a seemingly random video about football, I thoroughly enjoy JG9's exhaustive reporting and his obvious love of the history of the game. It makes this channel a must-watch!
Every year the first Monday night of the season should be a super bowl rematch from the year before
I’d have the 1st Thursday game be a rematch, so the 1st game of a new season is a rematch of the last game of the old.
Good history man! I remember when the Dolphins and Bears played on Monday Night.
I see why Tagliabue wanted to have two Monday Night Games. I would have at that time looked to have two Monday Night games as well EXCEPT make it a split ESPN/ABC doubleheader, with Game 1 at 8:00 PM in the east on ABC/5:00 PM in the west on ESPN and Game 2 at 8:00 PM in the west on ABC and 11:00 PM in the east on ESPN. That would have eliminated the problem with the west coast ABC always had back then (today, it's not the problem it was back then as the NFL is the 800-pound gorilla of sports and crushes everything).
The other thing I would have done in 2003 is NOT have brought in John Madden as I felt his $8 Million a year salary was not worth it. I would have kept Dan Fouts and replaced Dennis Miller with Angie Harmon (who had two years earlier ended a run on the original "Law & Order") and actually has as I understood it an extensive knowledge of football (she was married to Jason Sehorn at the time) as I felt Ms. Harmon would bring more female viewers to MNF seeing a woman in the booth on what was then the NFL's biggest showcase who actually knew football. The combined salaries of Fouts and Harmon would likely have been about a quarter of what ABC paid Madden and I think would have produced the same results or close to that.
The worst idea was hiring Dennis miller
I suppose this has been discussed and I'd like to know what the reasoning is. Any team that has a Thursday night game has just three days off if they played the previous Sunday. This is simply brutal. Why do they not schedule Thursday night games only for teams coming off a bye week?
That makes a lot of sense. The only problem is that you're limiting the Thursday games to the middle portion of the season, because for the first few and last few weeks of the season, there are no bye weeks.
Unfortunately, Thursday night games are here to stay. I think they suck.
@@russs7574 THURSDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL IS AWESOME!!
The NFL schedule is created at least a year plus before the season and released in April/May. All they can do is put games in prime time that they THINK will be the best. They have no way of knowing what teams may or may not actually be as good as they initially thought. A game that back in May looks like a marquee matchup could wind up being a stinker by the time november rolls around, especially if you add injuries to the mix. It is not like they are scheduling the games a month before they are played.
I wonder if the rise of free agency had anything to do with the MNF ratings decline. Is it possible that free agency made team quality harder to predict? Probably not as big of a factor as Sunday Ticket and the rise of satellites in general, but I wonder if that had something to do with it. Were games generally better in the '70s and '80s at least in terms of their records going in? I haven't studied and I don't know anyone who has.
@@pronkb000 Your theory on why MNF tv ratings in the last 5-10 years of ABC’s first run as the exclusive channel ie 2000-2005 is a good possible one. What is surprising to me which is not talked about more on the huge tv ratings slide at that point in league history is is this reason. At the turn of the 21st Century the NFL was going through a huge transition period as legendary players from the 80s and early 90s ie Montana, Marino, Elway, Rice, Lawrence Taylor, Aikman, Emmitt, etc had all or was just ending their immortal careers as well.
No it's not, Steve. Next year's NFL schedule can't be set until the end of this year's regular season. They have a formula.
You play each team in your division twice. If you're the Steelers, that means a home-and-away with the Browns, Bengals and Ravens. That's six games.
Four games against another division in your conference. So if you're the Raiders, you might be playing the AFC East, so you'd have games against the Patriots, Jets, Bills and Dolphins....2 at home, 2 on the road. This rotates every year, so you see the same division every three years. Now you're at 10 games.
Four games against a division in the other conference, 2 at home, 2 on the road. If you're the Packers, you might be playing the AFC West...Broncos, Raiders, Chargers and Chiefs. That's 14 games.
Two games against the other divisions in your conference. Go back to #2. For the Raiders, that would mean a game against the AFC North, and AFC South. Each team in the division plays the teams from the other division that finished in the same spot in the standings. That is, the division winners play each other, as do the last place teams, etc. That's 16 games, and that's where the schedule used to end.
Finally, starting this year, the NFL is playing 17 games. It will be similar to the games in the example above, except it would be against a team in the other conference. Thus, if we go back to the Packers, they would play the team from either the AFC North, East, or South that finished in the same standings position as the Packers.
So far from setting the schedule "A year plus in advance," the 2022 NFL schedule will not be finalized for over another month. And that's only taking who plays who into account. It will take longer than that to figure out where and when, due to the fact that pro football venues often book other events. (For example, Heinz Field here in Pittsburgh, is also the home of the Pitt Panthers, and also hosts 6 Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League football championship games over a weekend either Thanksgiving week, or the week after.)
For the Dennis Miller thing alone he shouldn't be in the hall.
Tagliabue’s idea fixed 1 problem and created a dozen more.
I cant lie.....I didnt think it was that bad an idea. Couldnt think of a bad reason why at all. Then he kicked it in......and now I feel so stupid. Of course this was a very bad idea
I say Dennis Miller is the DUMBEST IDEA in Monday Night Football HISTORY
This kid is a genius. Case closed. I love this channel.
Definitely in the late 90s and early 2000s, MNF was losing big time to professional wrestling, especially when Raw and Nitro were going head head with each other. If you look back at Monday Night Raw ratings from 1998-2001 during the NFL season, they were still very high which tells you, people were picking wrestling over the NFL during that time period and it was hard not to watch wrestling during that time, as it was really really good during that period.
JG9 straight up cut a promo on Paul Tagliabue
I like how everyone thought this was a bad idea back then but now everyone seems to be okay with it because I’m pretty sure this happened about 4 times this year.
Two very different things. Today, it’s a doubleheader on 2 different networks (so one game is ABC and the other is ESPN). Back then, it was a doubleheader on the same network (so both games at the same time and they’re both on ABC and depending on where you are in the country, you get one of them and not the other)
Today, it’s 2 nationally televised games on 2 networks. This proposal was 2 regionally televised games on 1 network
MNF ratings went down for that period because the games started progressively later. Nominally the game started at 9 PM eastern, which is too late anyway, but kickoffs kept creeping to later and later. American sporting events in general kept taking longer and longer, so the games never ended before midnight. Some people have jobs to get up for.
Plus, 1994 was the salary cap. After that and a few expansions, good teams deteriorated faster. It's nice to have a league where a team can go worst to first in a few years, but the flip side is that a match-up an go from attractive to unwatchable between the day yiu schedule it and game day.
I never understood why MNF started on 9 PM on the East Coast, when it was on ABC. A prime time NFL game in my opinion, shouldn't start at any later than 8:15. I mean, it would become practice for the game to end well past midnight (especially if you accumulate halftime, any likely overtimes, timeouts do to player injuries, etc.) that way.
In addition to the ability to flex games, you needed a character that made people want to watch MNF. In the 70's and early 80's it was Cosell. Half the people hated Cosell but they watched and that's all that mattered. Dennis Miller didn't work, but I get their thinking on that. Madden was past his prime by the time he was on MNF and later SNF.
I thought MNF Madden was totally rejuvenated working with Al. He'd spent the previous few years basically babysitting a decaying Pat Summerall. Now he had to keep up with a guy who was still at the top of his game.
Dennis Miller censored was simply much too diminished a product.
@@pronkb000 Pat Summerall didn't deserve John Madden at the end, really.
@@matthewdaley746 MNF on a 7 second delay.😂
@@KevinT7274 Eventually, the unedited product would slip out, and, released pirated.
Dennis Miller being an announcer almost killed MNF
Paul Tagilbue never had a good idea.
He was the second-worst commissioner.
Where on earth do you get the information and ideas for your videos?
Well, here's a way you could make everyone happy.
The flexing of the games you wanna put on Monday, air one on ESPN, and the main one on ABC. Put a B-team for the ESPN one, as far as the commentary crew, etc. But that way, you can air 2 games for Monday Night and in the local markets, air the ESPN game on ABC and vice-versa. I'm not saying that would solve ALL the issues, but it's part of a solution
ESPN is already populated by B-Teamers.
I can’t believe they actually went for this for this season.
You left the most important thing out. People had told ABC for years that the 9 pm start time was too late to start the game for the east coast. Most east coast people watched till halftime for the week review and went to bed. Many games seemed to be over at the half and people had to work in the morning.
why not a 3pm game
The NFL and ABC agreed in 1998 to a kick-off time of 8 PM ET because of these complaints. However, it returned in 1999 to the longtime 9 PM ET start.
Dennis Miller was the stupidest decision
The future Trumptards loved him.
Speaking of dumb ideas, you could do one on the bizarre decision by ABC to hire Dennis Miller as a color commentator.
How about covering The Dumbest Hiring in ESPN History: Rush Limbaugh?
Ratings were good and probably would have went through the roof if Rush didn't walk away and ESPN didn't subsequently let him go.
@@KevinT7274 No, Rush didn't walk away. He was escorted out after making some derogatory comments about black quarterbacks.
Your piece of revisionist history marks you as a Dittohead...and I'll bet I can guess whose bumper sticker is on your testosterone-sized pickup with the gun rack mounted on the rear window.
@@russs7574 Don't go by what the media tells you, watch it again, read the transcript then see if you have a different opinion after that.
And no I don't have a pickup either, used to. Why would I put bumper stickers on a nice pickup anyway?
Of course everyone who's hired and rehired Keith "Countdown to no ratings" Olbermann (NBC, ESPN that's you) has that beat in spades
This was smack dab in the middle of Attitude era in WWF, that had to have something to do with it.
I know this video is nearly a year & half old but a couple of things:
1. 4:38 that will change this year for the 2023 season
&
2. last year in 2022 as well 2023 we had/will get a double shot of MNF everyone
how things have quickly changed
My question is why would the NFL have two games compete for ratings against each other? It makes no sense.
Ah yes, the '97 Dolphins-Bears switch to MNF because Marlins. Seeing my team blow a 15-point lead to an 0-7 team with half a quarter left and lose in OT? Good times. I suppose it was the Bears' revenge for '85. At least the Marlins won the World Series, they owed me after that fiasco. I did love the clips of the Fins spanking the Bears in '02 though 😊
I think Ricky Williams just ran all over them in that Monday night matchup in 2002
@@JWex-jy7sk A friend's cousin was talking all kinds of smack to me before that game (he's from Chicago) and afterwards he didn't have a single word to say, it was glorious 😄
@@DolFan316 Man the Bears were 3-9 heading into that game against a 7-5 Dolphins team
What kinda smack did he have to prove for the Bears as the better team heading into that? 😂
@@JWex-jy7sk WELL...there was a bit of personal animosity between us so that was probably the reason more than anything.
Did the ESPN crew announce that game?
I watched this guy's videos before about being critical of some potential or past tv moves in NFL broadcasting. Most of it, he's right on. This however, I disagree with him. While he does hit on some good points like John Madden reportedly wanting as many viewers to see him, he misses on some points like when he stresses that a 2nd game would add to production costs and the network would hurt there. A 2nd game also brings in twice as many markets (so that surely would offset production costs of a 2nd truck) and he contradicts himself by saying that a reduced Sunday afternoon slate would potentially hurt the ratings. In the 70s & 80s ABC's Monday Night BASEBALL almost always had a #2 (backup) game (although one need for baseball telecasts is you have the possibility of rainouts/delays). I dont fault Taglibue for coming up with that idea, it wouldve had to have been done in a subsequent contract in order to satisfy Fox & CBS as money always talks. But its something that when parity came to the league, so do diminishing ratings in Monday Night Football because there was no guarantee that the Cowboys would always be good in week 16 or remember that late season Niners-Falcons matchup in 1999? The days of the NFC playoffs consisting of a pool of just 6 teams (Bears, (former) Redskins, Rams, 49ers, Giants & Cowboys) 95% of the time from 1983-1986 have been a thing of the past by 2003 or so. I wouldve liked to have known who ABC wouldve used for their #2 MNF team hads that wouldve became reality? Brent Musburger? Dan Fouts? Besides, this all became moot when that new contract DID happen. Instead of going to two MNF games, they did allow for flexible scheduling for the over the air network prime time slot and NBC came in and outbid ABC and that night was done on Sunday nights considering the logistics of it never been tried before.
Honestly I kinda miss this guy I was a kid when he was running the league but he was a 100x better then goodell
haven't watched yet....is it Monday Night Football on Tuesday? Because that'd be pretty dumb.
Tagliabue's idea was worse than if you did nothing but spike the ball into the ground on every single play.
Pretty soon there will be no more free over the air football at all.
Do a Bachelor, Dancing with the Stars and American Idol hybrid, if a receiver wants to go in motion he has to dance, when the referee announces anything he has to sing and during official reviews have a rose ceremony with the cheerleaders.
Another cost: a high powered fan to air our the broadcasters' booth after Madden begins digesting his XL meatball and parm sub sandwich...lol
Most people don't realize the song "Another One Bites the Dust" preformed Detroit Lions named their group The Bue Fighters that day.
Not a lot of people is watching Football games on Monday nights! Most people are way too busy get ready for work next day or probably taking care of families hobbies?
the dumbest ideas were Miler and Kornheiser
Dennis Miller was terrible censored, Tony Kornheiser simply sucks without Michael Wilbon awfully apparent.
They fired hank jr...... Dumbest idea in the history of dumb ideas .
Dennis Miller is a great comedian, but adding him to MNF was one of the dumbest ideas ever. He didn't know Jack about football.
To put that number into perspective: It had a higher rating than if it spiked the ball into the ground on every play
This aged well
From 96 thur 2001 pro wrestling killed MNF in the ratings .
The dumbest idea was moving mnf from abc to espn
What might have worked instead of having two Monday Night games would have been to set up the schedule with two "possible" Monday Night games each week, then picking one of the two to be the actual Monday Night game. This would allow networks and ticket buyers to know exactly which games could be moved and which absolutely would not be. It's not perfect, because it's still possible to have to choose between two duds, but it beats having one guaranteed dud.
Teams would balk at this, how would they make their travel reservations? Road Mondays are hard enough, the league goes out of its way to minimize road after road Monday, now imagine having to make a whole extra day of potentially worthless reservations for lodging and food and practice facilities.
And as for shared stadiums? Yeah, good luck getting the grounds crew and events staff to go along with that, they have concerts and other events at the stadium to schedule!
@@SamnissArandeen All valid points, but this is exactly what the league will be doing starting in 2023, (for the last six weeks of the season) with the only difference being that any game can be flexed to Monday night. My suggestion would have limited that to one potential game, and we know in advance which game it would be.
Had no idea they ratings were bad then, it was my favorite Era of MNF.
2005 had overlapping Monday night games due to Hurricane Katrina. The 2005 Saints might be a good topic for this channel.
The idea: Have two games on Monday night.
4:36 Eagles and Chiefs played each other on MNF in 2023 after SBLVII
The Desperate House wives took Monday Night Football from ABC to ESPN
Dumbest idea was to make it a paid event lost a lot of people
I don't blame ABC, FOX and CBS for taking a huge steaming dump all over this proposal. Tagliabue clearly didn't think this through. If the Jaguars were the road team against a home team whose primary DMA and any secondary DMAs got blacked out, the only market of note outside the Jacksonville/Brunswick, Ga. DMA that would've aired the game was the Orlando/Daytona/Melbourne area (Gainesville, Fla. and Savannah, Ga. head up tiny markets), but with the Jags being a distant 3rd at best over there, this idea wouldn't have worked too well.
Tuesday night football sounded like a better idea.
I guess there's a reason I've never heard of this guy.