10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A look at the show that changed sports broadcasting, August 4, 2003
By A Customer
I recently picked up this 1988 book because I had seen the TNT movie of the same title, which was based on this book and which I thought was quite good. The book itself provides a large amount of detail about the interplay between all the main people involved in putting Monday Night Football on the air between 1970 and 1987.
The person who dreamed up the entire concept of prime-time football (helped by some prodding from NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle) was the executive producer of ABC sports, Roone Arledge. His vision of the future and his love of innovation was the primary reason that MNF made such an impact when it debuted in September 1970. It succeeded because it was hugely entertaining and because nothing like it had ever been seen before on television.
The popularity of pro football had grown tremendously during the 1960s. But Arledge felt that in order to successfully broadcast NFL football games in prime time, and to compete against the other networks' established Monday evening shows, the emphasis needed to focus on the personalities in the broadcast booth as much as the action on the field. He wanted the show to be an event, not just a televised football game. He put together a brilliant group of three people - a 'straight man' for the play-by-play descriptions, a charming 'regular guy' ex-player for game analysis, and a 'host' with a strong journalistic background who could tied it all together by adding some depth to the show while also playing the role of provocateur.
The original broadcast team (or "cast" if you will) consisted of Keith Jackson (replaced after one year by Frank Gifford), Don Meredith and Howard Cosell. These men all had very different personalities, especially Cosell whose background was as a journalist rather than an ex player, and that was the main reason the show had such an edge. Cosell had a delicious combination of a brilliant mind, a huge ego, and at the same time a desperate need to be liked by his audience. The interplay between Cosell and the other two men could be caustic, but very often it was wonderful.
Arledge's concept, after a brief rough start, worked amazingly well for the most part. In fact it could be argued that it worked too well. As the show soared in popularity, the egos of the men involved (including those of the behind the scenes personnel) soon clashed and made MNF a high-wire act where the audience and even the broadcasters themselves were never quite sure what would happen each week. Behind the scenes there were temper tantrums, drunkenness, pettiness, pouting, profanity and debauchery. Although the viewing public had little clue of all this infighting, the tension it caused added a raw edge to the broadcast each week. It all made for great television, and the public ate it up.
But all too soon the tensions built up beyond the toleration point. Meredith got fed up and left the show after the fourth season (1973), and although Arledge did his best to replace him (eventually adding ex-player Alex Karras), it never quite was the same as it was in those first four years (or three if you discount the first year before Gifford replaced Jackson).
Even when Meredith returned to the show in 1977, the bud was off the flower, as O.J. Simpson later put it. The popularity of MNF remained strong, but it was never quite the national sensation as during those first few years. By the early eighties, Cosell had become so disenchanted (not to mention obnoxious to work with), that he left the show, soon to be followed by Meredith. The ratings dropped, and Arledge began to scramble each year to put together another team with the same magic as Gifford, Cosell and Meredith. He never could.
Eventually, after Cap Cities took over ABC in the mid-eighties, the team of Al Michaels, Dan Dierdorf and Gifford was formed, which I remember as quite good, but the primary emphasis was now shifted to the game itself, rather than the interplay of personalities in the booth. One of the best and most poignant lines in the book was on the very last page. In those early years, it was "Monday Night Football". After the breakup of the original cast, it became merely football on Monday night.
I gave this book four stars rather than five because it is based almost completely on the more than one hundred interviews conducted by the authors. As expected, facts get twisted around plenty as different people "remember" with their own slants as they try to protect their egos and reputations. From comments at the end of the book, it appears the authors did very little, if any, review of the actual network tapes of shows to which they referred with specific incidents. I have several early MNF games on videotape (don't ask me how) that are referred to in the book. I went back to my tapes, and in each instance what was presented as actually going out over the air was very different from what I saw on the broadcast tapes. Unfortunately for me this puts the authors' credibility somewhat in question.
Still, overall this book is very good. I recommend Monday Night Mayhem for readers interested in either the history of pro football's golden age or in the history of sports broadcasting. Those early years of MNF were historic and were fun and fascinating to watch. I consider myself lucky to have grown up in the decade of the '70s and to have watched those magical broadcasts with such boyish wonder. When it was in its heydey, there was nothing bigger than the phenomenon of ABC's Monday Night Football.
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