08:44 PM
12/21/24
12/21/24
September 21, 2021
SportsFilter: The Tuesday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
On this day in 1970, the first Monday Night Football game was broadcast. I remember it well.
Change was rampant throughout football.
A few days earlier, a fully integrated USC team had gone to Alabama and soundly beaten Bear Bryant's last all-white team.
It was the first season for the merged NFL and AFL teams. All the jerseys now had the players' names on the back (a radical concept back then). A Monday night telecast was just one more dramatic departure.
The Browns and the Jets were relevant on that first Monday night. Both had won their divisions the previous seasons and the Jets were still basking in the afterglow of their momentous Super Bowl III win over the Colts. Cleveland had just moved to the new AFC from the old NFL.
These days, an aging Joe Namath appears on late night TV ads for supplemental Medicare coverage...and I'm a card carrying member of his target audience.