Monday Night Football Gives Me A Headache

It's sensory overload.

ESPN treats its Monday Night Football game each week like it's the Super Bowl.  Now, I'm all for self promotion, to an extent.  But the amount of attention devoted to this game on game night is nauseating.

It starts as the lead story, almost regardless, on Around the Horn and Pardon The Interruption. And usually, PTI has Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon at the stadium (Kornheiser has to be there anyway because he's providing color commentary for the game.)

Then it's on Sportscenter.  The lead story.  Teams at 20 updates.  Breakdowns from countless former NFL players.

We move onto Monday Night Countdown, where there are so many people on this broadcast I can't even keep them all straight.

From what I can remember, here's who ESPN has on it's broadcasts of this Monday Night Football pre-game extravaganza:

• Chris Berman
• Keyshawn Johnson
• Mike Ditka
• Tom Jackson
• Cris Carter
• Chris Mortensen
• Sal Paolantonio
• Michelle Tafoya
• Stuart Scott
• Emmitt Smith
• Steve Young
• Mike Tirico
• Ron Jaworski
• Tony Kornheiser
• Ed Werder
• Rachel Nichols
  

That's sixteen people.  Sixteen!  The fact that I can name all of them, or most of them, or maybe that's too many and some of them are subconsciously appearing on screen, is a sad commentary on how rich and fulfilling my life is.  And to be fair, Tirico, Jaworski and Kornheiser have no choice but to be there, because they're calling the action.  But that's way too many people to be covering one game.

Why don't they just relocate the campus of ESPN to wherever the game is each week?  Oh wait, they basically already have.

Like I said, it's sensory overload.  There are so many people telling me things about this football game that I can't keep them all straight.  I miss the days when we just had a couple guys on set getting us ready for the game.  

What happened to the two man team--an anchor and an analyst to break things down?  Even three people is fine by me.  But when the set was smaller, I felt more of a personal connection to these men telling me about the upcoming game.  It was like watching a couple of buddies discuss a football game and I got to sit in and watch.

Now it's like watching a board meeting.

People who want to criticize ESPN for having bad games on Monday Night?  There's nothing they can do.  NBC has the rights to the flex schedule, and ESPN basically has to guess which games will be good before the season to select them for Monday Night.  With the parity that currently exists in the NFL, that's a complete crap shoot.

What ESPN doesn't seem to understand, though, is that Monday Night Football isn't the Super Bowl.  It's not the game of the week.  The biggest game of the week is on Sunday night now on NBC.  That game is still on free television (for a couple more months, anyway) and it has the network A-list broadcast team.  

Monday Night Football is a new TV show for ESPN.  And I'm not saying that they shouldn't promote their newly acquired product.  They have some very talented broadcasters affiliated with it who do a good job in their spots.

But they need to scale it back.  I can't watch it anymore.  It gives me a headache.