"It is a hot . . . sultry . . . almost windless night here at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio, where the Browns . . . will . . . play host to . . . the New York Jets."
The voice, with its unmistakable staccato cadence and Brooklyn accent, was the first thing the TV audience heard 25 years ago as a camera panned over two decks of packed seats and came to rest on the decidedly untelegenic face of Howard Cosell.He stood on the football field, a slicked-back toupee parked atop his head. His maroon blazer clashed with the green grass behind him. His hand shook as he held the microphone.
It was not a pretty sight.
But Howard Cosell would soon become a huge TV star - and ABC's "Monday Night Football," the show he introduced that night, was about to remake the landscape of TV sports.
"Monday Night Football" begins its 25th season Monday night not as a mere TV program, but as a staple of American culture. The program is no longer the phenomenon that it was in the 1970s, when movie attendance dropped on Mondays and bowling leagues shifted to other nights to avoid the competition, but it remains a consistent winner in the ratings.
And, even as TV sports has exploded across the dial, with a dozen or more football games available every week, "Monday Night Football" broadcasts of National Football League games stand above the crowd.
The Monday night tradition helps. So does the current announcing trio of Al Michaels, Dan Dierdorf and Frank Gifford, who have been together since 1987 and get along well. "There's an adrenaline burst every Monday night," Michaels says. "It's almost an honor to be part of this show."
Glorious beginnings
It was Monday, Sept. 21, 1970. Richard M. Nixon was president, "Marcus Welby, MD" was television's top-rated show, and the skeptics were certain that Roone Arledge, the president of ABC Sports, would fall flat on his face with "Monday Night Football." Sports programming, they predicted, would never play in prime time.
They were, as Cosell might have said, utterly and inalterably mistaken. "Almost from the start, `Monday Night Football' became a great experience for people who watched," recalled Arledge, its creator. "The whole social fabric of the country was changed."
Young fans can't imagine how primitive the world of TV sports was before then. During the 1950s and 1960s, sports were packaged and sold on television for fans only, mostly men. TV producers did little more than dutifully document the contests. Team owners didn't mind the absence of razzle-dazzle; to the contrary, they feared TV as a competitor. Baseball commissioner Ford Frick summed up the prevailing opinion when he said: "The view the fan gets at home should not be any better than that of the fan in the worst seat of the ballpark." The networks obliged, providing dishwater-dull coverage.
Sports as entertainment
Arledge and "MNF" changed all that. Sports television, he decreed, should entertain viewers, just like everything else on the tube. Football would be just one element of the show - and not always the most important one. "MNF" would deliver not just an athletic contest, but also a flavorful stew of drama, comedy and soap opera.
His approach led him, for the first time, to make room for three men in the announcers booth: Humble Howard Cosell, Dandy Don Meredith and Keith Jackson. In the show's second season, Frank Gifford, who has been there ever since, replaced Jackson. With his thundering personality, Cosell was the key: bombastic, opinionated, self-important, egotistical and yet impossibly insecure, he would become the lightning rod, the man viewers both loved and loved to hate.
Their freewheeling style - Cosell and Meredith, at times, virtually ignored the game - unnerved pigskin traditionalists but appealed to millions of new fans, especially women. Monday nights soon meant yellow blazers, limousines, sports bars and halftime highlights. As Cosell once boasted: "We have become - if I may continue to tell it like it is, which is my nature - bigger than the game."
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Additional Information
Where are they now?
With few exceptions, the announcers most associated with "Monday Night Football" have pursued acting careers, with various degrees of success.
Howard Cosell: 76, retired from broadcasting three years ago when he gave up his daily network radio commentary. He lives in New York City.
Don Meredith: 56, lives quietly in Santa Fe, N.M., with his wife, Susan. He pursued an acting career, with limited success, after quitting "MNF."
O.J. Simpson: 47, awaiting trial on charges he killed his ex-wife and her friend. Was a longtime pitchman for Hertz and appeared in several movies.
Joe Namath: 51, seen most often on television as a pitchman for Nobody Beats the Wiz, a New York electronics store.
Alex Karras: 59, has enjoyed success as an actor, starring in television's "Webster" after leaving "MNF."