Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook

Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.

Hank Williams Jr. will have to find another place to gather his rowdy friends on Monday nights. In an admission that a once-revolutionary program is in the throes of midlife crisis, ABC will no longer televise the NFL's "Monday Night Football," beginning in 2006.

ESPN, like ABC a division of Disney Corp.'s Happiest Place on TV, found "Monday Night Football" to be a bargain at twice the price (ABC is paying $500 million a year; ESPN will pay $1.1 billion a year). But the shift to basic cable after 36 years over the air symbolizes a shift in the viewership: while sports fans are still ready for some football, the casual fan would rather watch "Everybody Loves Raymond."

But before MNF as we know it shuffles off this mortal coil, let's take a look back at the moments that made "Monday Night Football" water-cooler conversation, assuming you actually gathered around that moldy, cracking piece of plastic you call a water cooler.

1970: "Monday Night Football" premieres. While not an immediate aesthetic success, it's a ratings success. ABC Sports head honcho Roone Arledge's willingness to take a chance with MNF helps build up a career that made him a first-ballot enshrinee in any broadcasters' hall of fame. NBC and CBS suits, who turned down MNF when the NFL offered it to them first, joins the idiot from Decca who refused to sign the Beatles in 1962 as first-ballot enshrinees in the Dipshit Entertainment Executives Hall of Fame.

1971: Keith "He's a Hoss" Jackson exits the MNF booth, leaving Howard Cosell as the play-by-play announcer, as well as cementing his status as the most hated broadcaster in America. Think of the most arrogant, annoying, sanctimonious — yet compelling — broadcaster you've ever heard. Cosell was him turned up to 11 — thousand.

1973: John Lennon pops up to the booth for a chat during the Los Angeles Rams' 40-6 victory over the New York Giants. Lennon tells the MNF crew that while he gives peace a chance, he can't do the same for the Giants.

1974: Ex-Kansas City Chief and current Black Caesar Fred "the Hammer" Williamson joins the broadcast booth, and lasts only one exhibition game. Williamson spends much of the broadcast fighting with Cosell, climaxing with Williamson tearing off Cosell's toupee and dancing on it. At that moment, Marv Albert vows to never, never, ever piss off his broadcast partner.

1975: Cosell parlays his MNF fame into another gig: "Saturday Night Live." No, not that one. Cosell's "Saturday Night Live" doesn't last long, being put out of its misery at the first sign of trouble. Would that the same had happened with that other SNL.

1976: Color analyst and ex-Detroit Lion Alex Karras is gone from the booth to concentrate on raising his family, which will come to include a small, black child named Webster. Sadly, despite providing a loving home with an ample laugh track, Karras cannot keep the boy out of the clutches of Michael Jackson or the producers of "The Surreal Life."

1980: Cosell breaks in with news that John Lennon has been shot. With a stunned and shaken audience watching and listening, Cosell gives a touching farewell to Lennon, then ends his statement with a line that, even today, hardcore Lennon fans share as a way to soothe their grief: "First down, Patriots."

1983: Cosell leaves in disgrace at the end of the season after making what is construed to be racist remarks by saying, excitedly, "That little monkey gets loose, doesn't he?" to describe Washington receiver Alvin Garrett, who is black. Despite being confronted with videotaped evidence, Cosell denies he said it. Later, he says he meant it as a term of endearment, a defense that proved so wildly successful for Colorado University president Elizabeth Hoffman over a similarly misinterpreted term of endearment for a woman.

1985: ABC decides to create a Murderers' Row of ex-jocks by putting holdover Frank Gifford in the booth with Joe Namath and O.J. Simpson. The group is horrible and lasts only one season; it turns out ABC executives were, at most, only one-third right, depending on whether you believe the criminal or civil jury.

1985: This year also produced MNF's most memorable image — Washington quarterback Joe Theismann getting a leg broken in two by New York Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor. Part of the reason it's so memorable is that ABC replays it about a million times, including instant replay, slo-mo, reverse angle, helmet cam, linebacker cam, referee cam, and its latest innovation, Broken Limb-O-Vision.

1986-1993: Nothing interesting happens.

1994: MNF's second-most memorable image — Raiders running back Napoleon McCallum's gruesome leg injury, in which 49ers linebacker Ken Norton Jr. twists and rips McCallum in the same way he would take a turkey leg apart at Thanksgiving. Part of the reason it's so memorable is that ABC replays it about a million times, including instant replay, slo-mo, reverse angle, helmet cam, linebacker cam, back-judge cam, and its latest innovation, Snapping Ligament-O-Vision.

1995-1999: Yawn.

2000: In another attempt to jazz up the announcers' booth, comedian Dennis Miller is added as a game analyst. His sub-referential humor goes over as well as NAMBLA at a PTA convention. Babe.

2002: John Madden comes aboard as the new analyst. While he's legendary for his work with Pat Summerall on CBS and Fox, at this point Madden's bluster is less tough-actin' than Tinactin, his analysis less helpful than the helpful hardware folks at Ace, his act as stale as 10-day-old turducken, and ratings continue to slide.

2002: San Francisco 49ers receiver Terrell Owens celebrates a touchdown against Seattle by whipping a Sharpie out of his sock and signing the football. Critics assail Owens for his grandstanding; supporters wish Owens would have removed the Sharpies stuck in said critics' asses.

2004: MNF's third-most memorable image — "Desperate Housewives" star Nicolette Sheridan, dressed only in a towel, tries to seduce Owens, now playing for the Eagles, in a pre-game promo. ABC had once shown a fan in Houston giving the camera the middle finger, and once aired Al Michaels saying "No shit," but the post-Janet-Jackson-boobage-fueled controversy over the promo caused ABC not to replay it a million times, as planned, including instant replay, slo-mo, reverse angle, helmet cam, towel cam, locker cam, and its latest innovation, Throbbing-Sharpie-in-a-Cup-O-Vision.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.