Monday Night Football

Monday Night Football is a television broadcast of one of the premier National Football League games of the week. It airs live on the ABC television network in the United States on Monday nights during the NFL season, and is one of the most popular shows on American television, particularly among men. Monday Night Football (often informally abbreviated as MNF) is currently the second-longest-running prime time show on American television, after CBS's 60 Minutes.

Scheduling oddities

• Prior to 1978, there would be one "bye week" per season in which no Monday night game would be scheduled or televised.
• For a time in the 1980s, ABC also aired occasional games on Thursday nights. These were billed by the network as "Thursday Night Editions of Monday Night Football."
• From 1970 to 1995, ABC affiliates in Seattle and Portland aired MNF games on a one-hour tape delay in order to accommodate local newscasts (unless the Seattle Seahawks were playing, in which case the game would be shown live). The practice, long opposed by viewers and ABC, was ended in 1996.
• There have been a few occasions when two Monday night games were played simultaneously. In 1987, a scheduling conflict arose when Major League Baseball's Minnesota Twins went to Game 7 of the World Series, making the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome unavailable for the Minnesota Vikings' scheduled game that Sunday. The Vikings game was subsequently moved to Monday night, and ABC aired it in a split telecast with the regularly-scheduled MNF game. A similar scenario unfolded in 1997, when the Florida Marlins went to Game 7 of the World Series and the Miami Dolphins' Sunday game at Pro Player Stadium was shifted to Monday night.
• On October 27, 2003, the MNF game between the San Diego Chargers and Miami Dolphins was moved to a neutral site. The Cedar Fire in the San Diego area forced the teams to vacate Qualcomm Stadium, which was being used as an evacuation site. The game was moved to Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe and shown as scheduled.
• In September 2005, the New Orleans Saints vacated from the Louisiana Superdome in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and were forced to move a scheduled Sunday afternoon home game against the New York Giants from New Orleans to Monday night at Giants Stadium. In a unique television doubleheader, the Saints-Giants game started at 7:30 p.m. Eastern and the first half aired on ABC; at 9 p.m. the game shifted to ESPN while ABC began its regularly-scheduled MNF game. ABC and ESPN interspersed both games with an on-air telethon to raise money for aid to the hurricane's victims.
• The ABC MNF crew was slated to broadcast the AFC-NFC Pro Bowl on Sunday February 3, 2002. However due to 9/11, Super Bowl XXXVI and the Pro Bowl had to be moved back a week. The Pro Bowl was rescheduled and broadcast Saturday, February 9.