NFL on ABC

• 1. Introduction

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  The NFL on ABC once carried news that had nothing to do with football. During a game between the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots on the 8th of December 1980, announcer Howard Cosell told the audience that former Beatle John Lennon had been shot and killed. Viewers across the country were stunned. That night sits inside a long and uneven relationship between the American Broadcasting Company and the National Football League. The two have started, stopped and restarted their partnership several times since 1948. How did a network that kept losing its NFL rights build a Monday night franchise? Which broadcasts delighted, shocked or divided viewers? And why does ABC now show NFL games under another network's branding?

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• 2. Early Broadcasts

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  Harry Wismer was behind the microphone in 1948 when ABC carried the NFL Championship Game between the Chicago Cardinals and the Philadelphia Eagles. That was also the year the network tried a game of the week format. Live television could not yet cross the continent, and that limit shaped what viewers saw in 1949. The title game between the Eagles and the Los Angeles Rams reached only the West Coast. In 1950 ABC showed a playoff between the New York Giants and the Cleveland Browns. The Browns and Rams then met for the championship, and that game was televised in Los Angeles but not in Chicago.

  From 1951 the DuMont network took over as the league's main television carrier, and ABC stepped back. It returned in 1953 with contracts for the Chicago Bears and the Chicago Cardinals. The Washington Redskins joined in 1954, and the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers followed in 1955. Red Grange and Bill Fay usually called home games for the two Chicago teams. Bob Wolff and Dutch Bergman typically worked Redskins games. In 1955 the Redskins left for regional syndicated coverage, sponsored and produced by Amoco Gasoline.

  The Rams and 49ers games of 1955 went only to ABC affiliates in the Pacific Time Zone. Bob Fouts and Frankie Albert called many of them, as did the pairing of Bob Kelley and Bill Brundige. That same year ABC aired the Thanksgiving Day game between the Green Bay Packers and the Detroit Lions, with Wismer and Budd Lynch on the call.

  The arrangement ended the following year, when DuMont collapsed. CBS acquired television rights to every team but one. The Browns chose to form their own syndication network instead.

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• 3. Monday Night Launch

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  Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner, approached ABC during talks over a contract starting in 1970 and asked about a weekly Monday night package. ABC was reluctant, but it signed for the scheduled games. The first Monday Night Football broadcast aired on the 21st of September 1970, with the New York Jets playing the Cleveland Browns. Howard Cosell, Keith Jackson and Don Meredith shared the booth. Frank Gifford replaced Jackson in 1971.

  Only three broadcast networks existed in those days. The series became the longest-running prime-time sports program in television history, and one of the most valuable franchises on the air. The chemistry between Cosell, Meredith and Gifford often made it the top-rated program in the Nielsen ratings. Cosell was loved and hated in equal measure. The group's style turned each game into a spectacle, and it opened the way for more colorful broadcasters and round-the-clock sports coverage.

  The lineup did not stay still. Meredith left for three seasons, 1974-76, to work alongside Curt Gowdy on NFL on NBC, and then returned to Gifford and Cosell. To replace him in 1974, ABC chose Fred Williamson. Williamson was relieved before the regular season began, the first Monday Night Football personality who did not last a full season. Alex Karras, another former player and also a native of Gary, Indiana, took the job. In his first game, Karras saw steam rising from the head of the bald Oakland Raiders lineman Otis Sistrunk, who never attended college. He joked that Sistrunk came from "the University of Mars". Karras stayed three years.

  The schedule itself was also changing. Before 1978 no Monday game was played in Week 14, the last week of the regular season. From 1974 to 1977 ABC showed a Saturday night game that week instead. After 1977, that final week got its own Monday night kickoff.

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• 4. Two Controversial Nights

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  On the 5th of September 1983, the Dallas Cowboys played the Washington Redskins, and Cosell described wide receiver Alvin Garrett as a "little monkey". The phrase set off a racial controversy. The Rev. Joseph Lowery, then president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, called the comment racist and demanded a public apology. Jesse Jackson, Muhammad Ali and Garrett himself offered supportive statements. Garrett said, "I liked Howard Cosell. I didn't feel that it was a demeaning statement." The fallout still contributed to Cosell's decision to leave Monday Night Football after that season.

  Cosell defended himself by pointing to Garrett's small stature, saying race had nothing to do with it. He noted he had used the same words for his own grandchildren. Video from a 1972 preseason game between the Giants and the Chiefs supported him. In it, Cosell called Mike Adamle, a white athlete who stood 5 feet 8 inches and weighed 195 pounds, a "little monkey" as well.

  On the 18th of November 1985, Joe Theismann of the Washington Redskins suffered a severe compound fracture of the tibia and fibula in his right leg. Linebackers Lawrence Taylor and Harry Carson had sacked him during a game against the New York Giants. The booth of Gifford, O. J. Simpson and Joe Namath correctly sensed from the start that Taylor was signaling for help. At first only the players on the field could see how bad the damage was.

  Then ABC ran the reverse-angle replay. It showed Theismann's lower leg lying flat against the ground, with the upper part of the shin bent at 45 degrees to the rest. The bones had broken midway between the knee and the ankle. ABC showed the replay several times despite its graphic nature, and millions of viewers were shocked. Gifford repeatedly urged people at home to use discretion. That choice remains one of the most debated in-game production decisions in NFL television history.

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• 5. Changing Voices

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  In 1986 Al Michaels took over play-by-play duties, and Gifford moved to color commentary. Lynn Swann and O. J. Simpson joined the booth as color commentators that year. Gifford still handled play-by-play whenever Michaels was busy with postseason baseball for the network. In April 1987 ABC hired Dan Dierdorf to join Michaels and Gifford.

  On the 26th of October 1987, Gary Bender and Lynn Swann called a game between the Denver Broncos and the Minnesota Vikings. The game had been set for the 25th of October. The Minnesota Twins shared the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome with the Vikings, and they played Game 7 of the World Series there that day. The football game moved to Monday and was shown only in the Minneapolis and Denver markets. The rest of the country watched the Los Angeles Rams play the Cleveland Browns.

  From 1990 until 2005, the ABC package held seventeen regular season games, or eighteen in 1992 and 1993. In 2003, ABC dropped the Week 17 game in favor of the opening Thursday night game, which sister channel ESPN had carried the year before.

  Boomer Esiason, a former Cincinnati Bengals quarterback, replaced Gifford in the booth in 1998. Gifford was moved to a nominal role on a Monday night pregame show, which was cancelled after one season. ABC offered him nothing new. The kickoff also moved that year, from 9:00 p.m. Eastern to 8:20 p.m. Dierdorf was dropped after the 1998 season. Esiason followed after 1999, mainly because of personal conflicts with Michaels.

  In 2000 ABC lured the producer Don Ohlmeyer out of retirement to bring energy back to the broadcast. His changes included clips of players introducing themselves, new graphics, a sideline Steadicam, and music. For a time the score graphic used nicknames such as "Skins" and "Fins" for Washington and Miami. His most controversial move was hiring the comedian Dennis Miller to join Michaels and Dan Fouts. The experiment is widely regarded as a failure. Ohlmeyer left after one season, and ratings had fallen 7% from the previous year.

  ABC then turned to the veteran commentator John Madden, who had spent eight years at Fox Sports. Fox had lost $4.4 billion on its NFL contract since 1994, including $387 million in 2001 alone. Madden's next year would have cost Fox $8 million, so Fox let him go. ABC signed him on the 28th of February 2002 for $5 million a year for four years. Miller was let go, and Fouts moved to college football.

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• 6. Super Bowls And Playoffs

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  The NFL's 1982 television contract put ABC into the Super Bowl rotation for the first time, which gave it Super Bowl XIX in 1985. Before that, the game alternated between CBS and NBC, except for the first AFL-NFL World Championship Game, which both networks simulcast. A second renewal brought ABC Super Bowl XXII in 1988. The 1989 renewal added Super Bowl XXV, at the end of the 1990 season, and Super Bowl XXIX, at the end of the 1994 season. It also gave ABC one Wild Card game from each conference on the first Saturday of the playoffs.

  Those Wild Card games exist because the NFL added a third team per conference for the 1990 season, creating two extra playoff games. The Monday Night Football crew called whichever game ABC saw as the marquee matchup. Brent Musburger and Dick Vermeil, the network's second college football team, took the other. From the 1996 season that second game went to ESPN's Sunday Night Football team of Mike Patrick and Joe Theismann. Paul Maguire joined them in 1998, after NBC lost its broadcast rights. The one exception came in 2002, when Musburger and Gary Danielson called the AFC game in New York.

  Don Meredith retired from sportscasting after the 1984 season, and his last broadcast was Super Bowl XIX with Gifford and Theismann. Super Bowl XXII brought something new. It was the first with Michaels, Gifford and Dierdorf together, a trio formed when Dierdorf moved over from CBS. Gifford was the only holdover from the Super Bowl XIX telecast.

  For Super Bowl XXV, ABC did not show the halftime show live. Instead, Peter Jennings anchored a special ABC News report on the progress of the Gulf War. The halftime show aired on tape delay after the game, at about 10:40 Eastern. Most ABC affiliates ran the first episode of Davis Rules after the game and may have shown the rest of the halftime show later.

  Brent Musburger hosted all of the Super Bowl XXIX pregame, which lasted two hours, plus the halftime and postgame. He worked with Dick Vermeil and with Boomer Esiason, who was then a Jets quarterback. It was Musburger's last Super Bowl. After Disney bought ABC and ESPN came into the fold, ESPN's Chris Berman hosted every later ABC Super Bowl. It was also the last Super Bowl for the Michaels, Gifford and Dierdorf trio.

  Super Bowl XXXIV was the first Super Bowl in high definition and 5.1 Dolby Digital, and ABC Sports chose the 720p format. Michaels called it with Esiason. Super Bowl XXXVII was the first of three major championship series ABC aired in 2003, along with the Stanley Cup Finals and the NBA Finals. Michaels worked it with Madden, who became the first person to call Super Bowls on different networks in consecutive years, having done Super Bowl XXXVI for Fox. Super Bowl XL, on the 5th of February 2006, was the first with every part of the game itself in HD. It featured the Seattle Seahawks and the Pittsburgh Steelers, and it closed out ABC's run as a regular NFL broadcaster.

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• 7. Leaving And Returning

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  On the 26th of December 2005, the New York Jets hosted the New England Patriots in the final exclusive Monday Night Football game on ABC. The Jets had also played in the very first one. The television contracts among ABC, CBS, ESPN and Fox expired after that season. The new deal covered CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN and the NFL Network, sent Monday Night Football to ESPN, and removed both ABC and ESPN from the Super Bowl rotation.

  It was the second major sports package ABC lost within three years. NBC had taken the NHL rights a year earlier, and NBC also became the home of the NFL's national prime-time broadcast package. In 2006 Disney, the parent of both ABC and ESPN, merged ABC Sports into ESPN. Since then, ABC's sports programming has been produced by ESPN under the ESPN on ABC brand.

  The return began with a Wild Card experiment that failed. A game shown only on cable became the least-watched NFL playoff game in six years. On the 12th of May 2015, ESPN announced that ABC would simulcast its Wild Card telecast starting with the 2015-16 playoffs. It was ABC's first NFL game since its exit, and the arrangement has continued every year.

  More simulcasts followed. In 2017 ABC began simulcasting ESPN's Pro Bowl coverage, and it did so every year after except 2021, when COVID-19 cancelled that game. Since 2018 it has simulcast the final day of the NFL Draft. In 2019 ABC started airing a College GameDay branded version of the first two days of the Draft, replacing Fox, which had simulcast NFL Network's coverage in 2018. Also in 2019, ABC presented a two-hour special from the NFL Scouting Combine, the first time the combine was shown on broadcast television.

  The 50th anniversary of Monday Night Football, together with the Raiders' relocation to Las Vegas, brought the game back to ABC. ESPN's Week 2 game on the 21st of September 2020 was simulcast on ABC, the network's first Monday Night Football regular season game since 2005. ESPN2 carried it too, as part of ESPN's Megacast series. ABC added two late-season simulcasts, both involving the Buffalo Bills. On the 10th of January 2021, ABC joined ESPN's first NFL Playoff Megacast, with ESPN2, ESPN+ and Disney's Freeform carrying alternate presentations.

  ESPN renewed its Monday Night Football contract before the 2021 season. ABC would simulcast a Saturday doubleheader on the final weekend of the season. Starting in 2022 it would exclusively air an additional Monday night game, growing to at least three in 2023. ESPN also gained a divisional playoff game starting in 2023 and two future Super Bowls, all to be simulcast on ABC. The first season opened with a Week 1 game in Las Vegas on ABC, plus the Week 14 and Week 15 games. In February 2022, ABC aired the NFL Honors ceremony because NBC, that year's Super Bowl broadcaster, was busy with the Winter Olympics.

  On the 8th of April 2022, ABC said its Monday show Dancing with the Stars would move to Disney+ for one season, to make room for more football. ABC was scheduled for seven regular season games. On the 19th of September 2022, it exclusively aired the Minnesota Vikings against the Philadelphia Eagles. That was its first exclusive NFL game since Super Bowl XL. ESPN showed the Tennessee Titans against the Buffalo Bills at the same time, so viewers in Nashville and Buffalo watched their teams over the air on non-ABC stations.

  In 2023 ABC's scheduled regular season games grew from seven to nine. It aired the lone Monday night game on the 25th of December because ESPN was covering NBA Christmas games, and the New Year's Day weekend game moved to Saturday, the 30th of December. On the 18th of September 2023, ABC announced that Hollywood labor disputes would lead it to simulcast Monday Night Football every week. It aired 21 games that season, its most since 2005. In 2024, the network announced on the 11th of October that it was adding six Monday simulcasts, and it ended up with 18 games. For 2025, ABC planned 17 games, including Monday Night Football for 11 consecutive weeks. That was set to be the last year of ABC exclusive games, which are due to move to the NFL Network once ESPN completes its acquisition, pending regulatory approval.

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• 8. Rival Leagues

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  For five years starting in 1960, ABC aired games from the American Football League. The package had about 37 regular season games, the AFL Championship Game and the AFL All-Star Game. Most were regional broadcasts across 15 consecutive Sundays and Thanksgiving Day. The deal was the first cooperative television plan in pro football, with proceeds divided equally among the clubs. The NFL followed suit in 1961. NBC took the rights from ABC in 1965.

  The United States Football League ran on ABC from 1983 to 1985. The contract called for a Sunday afternoon game of the week, one prime-time evening game, and coverage of the divisional playoffs and championship game. The USFL had to schedule at least three Sunday games, and ABC was guaranteed one national game or two regional ones. Neither blackouts nor cross-feeding were addressed in the contract. The package added up to 21 telecasts.

  The World League of American Football appeared on ABC in 1991 and 1992, mostly on Sunday afternoons, and ABC aired the 1991 World Bowl. In 1992 the network's lineup included the late coach Jim Valvano as a sideline reporter on select games. From 1998 to 2002 it broadcast the Arena Football League's ArenaBowl under the Wide World of Sports banner. In 2007 and 2008 it returned with one regular season game and the ArenaBowl each year.

  ABC planned a weekly Saturday game and four Sunday games from the XFL in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic cut the schedule to five Saturday games and one on Sunday. On the 17th of May 2022, Disney announced that the XFL would come back to ABC when it returned in 2023. That year ABC aired 8 games, including the XFL Championship Game in prime time.

  After the XFL and USFL merged into the UFL, ABC and ESPN acquired partial television rights alongside Fox Sports. In 2024 ABC aired 9 regular season games and one division championship. The 2025 listing names two crews. Joe Tessitore or Roy Philpott called nine games with Jordan Rodgers, and Roy Philpott or Mark Jones called three with Roddy Jones.

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