Monday Night Misery

Stally's Goal Line Stand

One flop on MNF was more than enough
from the Rams this season! (Getty)

I've managed to get a Goal Line Stand out each week so far, but this weekend it seemed too close to everything else we were putting out to force another article on everyone.  Plus, I have something that really needs to addressed and directly relates to Monday, so I figured I'd roll it out at the appropriate time.

As hypocritical as it might sound after my stand last week that Andy Reid's tenure with the Eagles was about over (I never called for his head, merely conjectured an outcome), I don't usually find it fair to call for someone's job.  Heck, even today, I found a post on the Facebook wall of NH Motor Speedway saying that the organization should investigate the social media person (me).  The guy was mad that the Deal Share people for people to sign up for required an email.  (Um, hello?  That's how we contact you about cheaper tickets!)  I disregarded it, but it's always offensive having someone saying you should be fired.

That said, whomever oversees the Monday Night Football schedule at ESPN, should...be...fired!

The games that this person approved for MNF are routinely some of the worst games of the week.  Even before a team like the Colts or the Chiefs turned out to be far more inferior than expected, we had a terrible slate:

In Week 1, we got the Dolphins in one game, the Broncos and Raiders in another.
Week 2, the Rams.
Week 3, the Redskins.
Week 4, the Bucs (against the Colts, to make matters worse).
Week 5, the Lions and Bears turned out to be a watchable game.
Week 6 was the Dolphins...again (they lost 24-6 to fall to 0-6, two of which came on MNF).
Week 7, we were saw the Jaguars.
Week 8, the Chiefs (luckily, it was an exciting overtime game).
Week 9 was a good Bears and Eagles game (Hey, what do you know?  Good things happen when you schedule a good team like Chicago!).
Week 10, we suffered through the Vikings 45-7 loss to the Packers.
Week 11, the Chiefs lost 34-3 to the Patriots.
Week 12 was the best Monday matchup of the season: the Giants at the Saints.  Unforuntately, New York got blown out.
Week 13, we saw the Jags for the second time!
Week 14?  We get the Rams for a second time...and they're in Seattle no less!
We'll close it out with decent games: Pittsburgh at San Francisco (Week 15) and Atlanta at New Orleans (Week 16).
Thankfully, there's no Week 17 game.  I can only assume that since we only got treated to one Seahawks game that it would have been Seattle at Arizona, if the scheduler had his/her preference.

This is terrible.  We'll have to see Jacksonville, Miami and St. Louis twice.  All in all, if my predictions are correct, we would have seen a total of 15 playoff appearances in 17 games (that would include counting the likes of New England, etc. twice for multiple appearances).  That means that more than half of the appearances in a special, standalone night of primetime football will be made by teams that won't make the playoffs, and in many instances.  In many cases, they were teams that weren't ever considered to be in playoff contention.

Go ahead.  Find me even the most jaded Jaguars fan and have him tell me how his team was going to go 11-5 this year!  I doubt that would have happened.

The slate has been so bad that I almost always flip over to Hawaii Five-O on CBS promptly at 10 to get away from the misery that is Monday Night Football.  Hawaii Five-O isn't even that good this season, is readily available on Comcast's On-Demand and I've never been known as someone to turn off live sports for some TV show...until now.

Nobody wants to watch these games!  Tonight, it'll be an easy choice as I have zero intention of watching the 2-10 Rams at the 5-7 Seahawks for longer than I must.  It's become a travesty that Monday Night Football has been diminished to this and it's time for a change in the scheduler to ensure that us committed football fans never have to suffer through Monday nights like this again.

Please ESPN, is it Tuesday yet?  Make it stop!