I went to Chili’s with the family for dinner last night, following some Christmas shopping. The bar and the restaurant are just filled with large TVs, all of which, for some reason, were showing various sporting events, and NONE of which were showing anything worth watching, such as Spongebob Squarepants, or reruns of Mr. Ed.
Be that as it may, several of the televisions in my line of sight were showing a football game, which was apparently being played by the Atlanta Falcons and the Detroit Lions. Periodically during the telecast, the name of the television show was flashed across the screen: ESPN MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL.
“That’s odd,” I thought to myself. “Are they showing a rerun of last Monday’s game?” I went so far as to ask our server what was going on, but apparently she feels it’s more “professional” to concentrate on serving food to the customers than to watch the televisions, so she didn’t know.
Then I went to work. While I drove home from work this morning, somebody on NPR mentioned some player on the Detroit Team reaching some kind of record or milestone for passing yards received during last night’s loss to the Atlanta Falcons.
So, it wasn’t a rerun (unless the NFL has finally come to their senses and adopted a 186-game season where teams play each other multiple times, I’m pretty sure that this was the only meeting between those two teams for this season).
So, what’s the explanation for this? Has the NFL changed the name of the game to “MondayNightFootball,” instead of just “Football?” Or is there some other (probably sillier) reason for the Monday Night Football game to be happening on Saturday night?