So far we've already been "treated" to today's gem and the Raiders-Broncos matchups. I looked ahead and it actually gets more dreadful

WEEK FOUR- BENGALS @ STEELERS -- this will be terrible
WEEK SEVEN- PATRIOTS @ JETS -- will be lucky if the Jets score ten points
WEEK EIGHT- DOLPHINS @ STEELERS -- I am laughing out loud at the idea of this being played in primetime

It actually get a lot better after that but my point stands.

These games suck and the broadcast is garbage. Boog is legitimately retarded and Tess is an actual homo who shouldn't be allowed near football. The pregame show is Randy Moss and Steve Young trying to shout over drunk, stupid fans who cheer and boo their mindless picks. Then there's the avalanche of promo cuts with banal cliches like "they say not to cut corners, but what if there is no corner?" spoken over highlights. Its so bad. Why is MNF so bad? MNF used to be the THE game every week and now its almost sunk to the depths of TNF.

I understand why the NFL wanted to make Sunday night the game of the week instead of Monday night, and why if the whole point of that change is to dick around with game times to make sure the night game is good, you can't have a really good game unavailable for rescheduling if it's on a different day altogether. But that should be a feature, not a bug: if the best possible matchup for a given week was already set aside for Monday, chances are there's still another really good one available for Monday night, and now you have two big night games instead of one big one and a turd like this Redskins game or that Dolphins-Steelers game coming up. All things considered, the Monday package seems to have a little more juice than the old ESPN Sunday package, where it was just a cavalcade of mid-market AFC teams. The sound of having to get up early for school in the morning but for some reason you're half-watching yet another Titans-Ravens or Bengals-Jaguars game.

What I don't understand is how ESPN is so incompetent when it comes to producing actual games. They've been doing the NFL for over 30 years and they still can't seem to get it right. Sunday night was always amateur hour, then they moved to Mondays and whiffed on Kornheiser, Gruden always sucked, and since Tirico left they've completely lost their way. They never know whether they're the celebrity hangout show, the real-football-for-real-football-heads show, or just a cacophony of brain-damaged ex-jocks screaming over more screaming rubes. Their NBA presentation is almost as much of a gong show as their NFL presentation is. It's like the only time they raised a league's profile instead of the league raising theirs was the NHL.

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See I actually really liked Gruden and while he wasn't nearly as good the Madden/Micheals duo it was at least interesting. He had some lines every once and a while and the Caller Bob knows football. He would get excited about the right things.

This Booger MacFarland shit...I dont know what on earth they were thinking. It was actually better when he was swinging around in his needless fucking crane pissing off fans. I like the NBC broadcast even though I am thoroughly sick of Tony Dungy. FOX manages to still be watchable despite the abhorrent Frank Caliendo and Rob Riggle bits that have been inexplicably kept on for literally decades now. The ESPN presentation though somehow manages to be worse.

I really think they should go back the Dennis Miller route and get Bill Burr or Doug Stanhope in the booth. Even Pat MacAfee would be cool.

the only thing that is more antiquated than NFL pregame shows is message boards

There are a few reasons why this exists.

Teams are limited to the number of times they can be on prime time. Otherwise, the Patriots, Chiefs, and Chargers would be playing every single week in prime time. You also have 3 of them a week now, with Fox/CBS still paying huge money to have really good late afternoon games. So, you have to come up with 4 games a week that are "good" and that is nearly impossible with the teams at least somewhat being limited by the number of appearances.

I think every team also gets at least one prime time game and MNF is clearly the lowest priority so they throw the teams they know won't be good on it and often times they try and match them up with a team that they know delivers ratings regardless such as the Bears.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I like Booger. I know I shouldn't and he's one of the dumbest people I've ever heard broadcast a game in any sport, but he makes me laugh like a dozen times a broadcast. They need to replace that Tessitore dipshit though.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Booger gave us Virginia McCaskey has watched more football than anyone because she's 96 last night.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

I think has always been a fools erand to insist on a perfect MNF or SNF matchup every damn week. There are a bunch of factors and 32 teams. You simply are just going to have to have a few clunkers.

Edit: Otherwise you end up with the NFL equivalent of Red Sox-Yankees every damn week. Cowboys-Giants or something.

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Elections have consequences.

He also told us that if the Bears can get the running game going, and fix those issues in the passing game, then they'll have a pretty good offense.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

Season-long Thursday Night Football has gotta go. Do the opener, some in the middle of the year when the teams can always come off bye weeks, and Thanksgiving, but that's it. Maybe do a couple Saturday night games once it's legal at the end of the year.

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The fans hate it, the coaches hate it and the players hate it. Time to pull the plug.

That might actually be a true statement. She's certainly seen more Bears games than anyone alive.

But yeah, unless it's the Bears or an amazing match-up...I don't really pay much attention to Monday night football.

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@audioidkid

I heard someone explaining this situation yesterday- maybe Boomer on with Mac? Has to do with the NBC getting first pick of the games since SNF is their only game of the week and they pay more $. ESPN only pays just enough to secure the 24/7 use of highlights, thus they are relagated to the end of the draft, with no chance to flex out of a bad pick due to it being the only game that day.

I was off Monday, and the boys and I hit the sports bar for supper and the game- For a Bears game on MNF the place was a ghost town. Maybe only two or three tables there for the Bears. Not sure if it was the matchup, or the MNF coverage, or just a bunch of bandwagon fans around here...

except for FavreFan

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

This guy gets it.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

not nearly as much as I ask for it

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Oh, ESPN isn't paying chump change for the Monday package. They actually pay twice what NBC pays. NBC got the best-game package in '05 for $600MM. ESPN paid over a billion. I didn't believe it either but it's in Those Guys Have All the Fun.

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NBC also has the ability to flex a Sunday game into/out of their timeslot, which helps as the season rolls on.

People figured the Dolphins would be bad, but I don't think anybody expected the Steelers to be winless at this point.

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I wasn't writing anything down during the interview, I just remembered it had to do with how much was paid by the network. I think the rights to the 24/7 highlights was a large portion of the billion, which NBC wasn't willing to pony up. Then, they could bid higher for the SNF package alone. And, also, the league was desirous that the SNF game became the best game of the week and that a black quarterback succeed, or something like that...

I think it was Dick Ebersol who pitched Sunday night as the featured game with flexible scheduling and the league fell in love with it immediately. It was a very good idea, and a real lifeline for NBC, which was becoming the #5 network behind Telemundo until it got football back.

Semi-off-topic: if you work backward, it was CBS poaching baseball from NBC, which had had baseball since before NBC was even in the television business, that put all the NFL moves into motion. CBS overextended itself to get baseball, did a real shit job of presenting it, and then when Murdoch got big ideas about bidding on the NFC, CBS didn't have the money to outbid Fox, even though the NFL would have been happy to keep the NFC on CBS where it too had been since the advent of television. Then once CBS went to hell and back in the mid-'90s (they lost affiliates over the NFL thing), they were able to get the AFC from NBC, where that had been for like 30+ years, and that sent NBC down the wayward path. Football contracts matter.

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