Monday Night Football : Interesting facts

Monday night football is back tomorrow. Lets move on to some interesting facts about it.

Monday Night Football (MNF) is a live television broadcast of the National Football League. Originally airing on the ABC network from 1970 to 2005, Monday Night Football was the second longest running prime time show on American broadcast network television (after CBS' 60 Minutes) and one of the highest-rated, particularly among male viewers. ABC aired a total of 555 Monday night games.

Monday Night Football moved to the ESPN cable network in 2006, ending a 36-year run on ABC. ABC and ESPN are both owned by the Walt Disney Company.

Monday Night Football can also be seen in Canada on TSN, in most of Europe on NASN and in some regions of the world outside the U.S. on ESPN International. A Spanish language version airs on ESPN Deportes in the U.S. and on ESPN International in Latin America.

History

Monday Night Football enjoyed success throughout its 36-year run, with the NFL using the national spotlight as a way of rewarding the best teams and biggest stars from the previous season. However, that process has come under fire, due to late-season contests involving promising teams whose fortunes had declined during the course of the season. Two examples came during the 1981 season, when neither of that season's Super Bowl teams—the San Francisco 49ers and Cincinnati Bengals—had played on Monday night, and 1999, when the St. Louis Rams won the Super Bowl after not having appeared in a Monday night game during the year. A third example was the 49ers and the Atlanta Falcons, after both making the playoffs in the 1998 season, meeting in the final MNF game of 1999 both with 4-11 records. Yet another example was the 2001 New England Patriots who won the Super Bowl after going through 2001 without a single "MNF" appearance.

Franchises with the most Monday night appearances include the Green Bay Packers, Dallas Cowboys, Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders, Chicago Bears, Denver Broncos, and Miami Dolphins. The most common Monday Night Football pairings are Denver vs. Oakland and Dallas vs. Washington, with each matchup having been televised 14 times. Also Atlanta vs. New Orleans has been on the Monday night schedule for three years in a row.

Teams can make a maximum of three Monday night appearances per season.