MNF Turns 55

[River Dog]

I saw where today is the 55th anniversary of Monday Night Football, the NY Jets led by Joe Namath vs. the Cleveland Browns. I can vividly remember that game. For quite a long time, perhaps 20 years or so until Sunday Night Football entered the market, MNF was the premier event of the week that everyone watched.

One of the things that has changed over the years is that every bar in the country used to have at least one "football board" for MNF. It was a large piece of cardboard with a grid consisting of 100 squares, with one team on the horizontal axis and the other on the vertical. You could buy a square, usually for $1-$5, write your name in the square, and once the board was filled, they'd draw the numbers 0-9 for each team and assign them to spots along each axis. The last digit of each team's score would occupy a slot along the axis and the intersection of those two digits determined the winner. Payouts varied, but most went by the score at the end of each quarter. So, if the score at the end of the first quarter was Seahawks 10, Niners 7, who ever had the square that aligned with the 0 for the Hawks and 7 for the Niners would win 1/4 of the pot. I guess that fantasy football and expanded betting caused those boards to go by the wayside.

The other MNF memory of mine comes from a bar, I think in Denver, that used to acquire an old TV set, set it up in the middle of the bar where everyone could see it, then put MNF on the set. Prior to the game, they'd raffle off a brick, and the winner had one instruction: Wait until Howard Cosell said something stupid, and they could throw the brick through the TV. They said that it was a great promotion. You can imagine the atmosphere: Cosell would come on and say something stupid and the crowd would yell "Throw the brick, throw the brick!"

[NorthHawk]

I don’t remember the first game but I do remember thinking how cool, another football game to end the week and avoid homework.

Good story about the old tv’s and bricks. Those types of things are what memories are made of.
I worked with some guys who had a football pool (picking winners from the list of games) and the weekly winnings was about $250. My pay for the month was about $450 so it was a big deal if I had won. So this one week I and another guy had them all correct going into Monday nights game and the team I picked to win was going for the field goal to win when Ted Hendricks (the mad stork) stuck his big paw up and blocked the FG. It ruined my whole year and I’m still choked about it.

[River Dog]

I don’t remember the first game but I do remember thinking how cool, another football game to end the week and avoid homework.

Good story about the old tv’s and bricks. Those types of things are what memories are made of.
I worked with some guys who had a football pool (picking winners from the list of games) and the weekly winnings was about $250. My pay for the month was about $450 so it was a big deal if I had won. So this one week I and another guy had them all correct going into Monday nights game and the team I picked to win was going for the field goal to win when Ted Hendricks (the mad stork) stuck his big paw up and blocked the FG. It ruined my whole year and I’m still choked about it.

Great story! I can remember a lot of people doing a premature TD dance...but there's a penalty flag on the play!

Back in the early 80's when I was a shift supervisor, we ran a football board on my shift for $5/square, or $500 total. People from other shifts and around the plant participated, including some managers, due to the high payout. After the game, the HR manager came up and told me not to do it anymore as anything above $100 you had to register with the state gambling commission. At least he let us play the game. That would have sucked trying to chase everyone down to give them their $5 back.

On that same shift during the same period of time, we also used to play paycheck poker, where you took the last three digits of a check number and the cents on the check to make a poker hand. As the shift supervisor, I had to run the game as the checks were private to each employee (garnishments and that sort of thing). That was kinda fun until some lady thought she had won the pot, but her check wasn't in the bundle I had because she was on vacation the previous week and had picked it up from HR, so I gave her $5 entry fee back. She made a big deal out of it, complained to her union and to the HR office, and they made us quit playing it. Boy, were the other folks pissed at her.

[c_hawkbob]

How 'bout the Lions in tonight's MNF game? I'd have picked them if it weren't in Baltimore, but that O-line is solid! Defense pretty fierce too (I type as they wrap up their 7th sack!)

[Aseahawkfan]

Be nice to see the Lions make the Super Bowl, but they can't seem to put it together in the playoffs.

[NorthHawk]

How 'bout the Lions in tonight's MNF game? I'd have picked them if it weren't in Baltimore, but that O-line is solid! Defense pretty fierce too (I type as they wrap up their 7th sack!)

They drafted Tate Rutledge at RG this year and he's showing to be a road grader. He was a guy I hoped we would get along with Zabel to really improve up front. The Seahawks traded up to get Emmanwori who might be good in time, but our most pressing need was IOL - and frankly still think it is.

[Oly]

They drafted Tate Rutledge at RG this year and he's showing to be a road grader. He was a guy I hoped we would get along with Zabel to really improve up front. The Seahawks traded up to get Emmanwori who might be good in time, but our most pressing need was IOL - and frankly still think it is.

I'm right there with you, at least on that last point about our most pressing need. After watching that last game, I can't think of a worse OL in the league than Bradford. We've seen a lot of shitty OL on the Hawks in recent years, but can you point to a single Hawks OL who is clearly worse than Bradford?

Thinking about this Emmanwori vs. Rutledge choice, let's just say that our scouts were right and Emmanwori's R1 grade was legit and there was a clear gap in the grade with Rutledge, at least for a zone scheme. How much does need shape that? I'm normally BPA all the way, but Bradford is so, so, so bad that a RG with a R3 grade would help this team more than a DB with a R1 grade. I still think that JS should be prioritizing picks who have the potential to be elite, but it does feel like that choice will mean a worse record this year. I'm glad I don't have to make that call.

[NorthHawk]

I'm a believer of if you publicly identify an area of need you then go after it fully. In this case we needed upgrades at all 3 IOL spots but only addressed 1. Sundell might end up being a good player, but waiting until the later rounds to throw a pick at a Tackle to Guard conversion seems to me a half hearted approach to filling that need. We've done that too often the last decade and more and that's what has put us in this position of continual need at IOL.