Don is correct, almostNBC Sunday Night games now seem to have the marquee matchups. They can flex-schedule them to fit what they consider a big game. This is what the schedule shows now for Sunday night.
from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Sunday_Night_Football
The first regular-season game to be shown by NBC under this contract, Miami at Pittsburgh, aired September 7, 2006, followed by the first Sunday-night gameâ€â€Indianapolis at the New York Giantsâ€â€on September 10, 2006. The actual first game of the runâ€â€the 2006 Pro Football Hall of Fame Game between Oakland and Philadelphiaâ€â€was televised on August 6, 2006.
NBC Sunday Night Football is the beneficiary of the league's new flexible-scheduling system. For the final seven weeks of the season (seven of the final eight weeks during the 2006 season because of Christmas weekend), the NFL has the flexibility in selecting games to air on Sunday night, stating that fans will be able to vote for what game they would like to see on the Sunday primetime slot. During those affected weeks, no game is initially scheduled for NBCâ€â€instead, the schedule slot for the NBC game is listed as "To be announced", and one Sunday afternoon game will be moved to the primetime slot. The NFL did earmark specific games for Sunday Night Football in Weeks 10-15 and 17 when the official schedule came out in April 2006.[1] CBS and FOX could each protect four of its games during Weeks 10-15 and also each protect one of its games for Week 17; however, these two networks had to decide which games to protect in early October 2006, after Week 4 of the NFL season.[1]
In the 2006 season, there was no game played on the first Sunday night which overlapped with the World Series (October 22 in the 2006 season), along with Christmas Eve night where NBC broadcast that week's game on Christmas afternoon instead. However, the broadcast of Football Night in America continued at its regular time on both occasions each Sunday, with a half-hour version of the program airing before the Christmas game and the two "Wild Card Saturday" games.
In 2007, there will be no broadcast on NBC for Sunday, October 28 due to game 5 of the 2007 World Series, which will be broadcast on FOX. Also, a tentative full-season schedule has been unveiled, including games in the last seven weeks of the season. Those games could be replaced under flexible scheduling if the need arises. The same rules under which CBS and FOX protect games for their own packages still apply.
Thursday September 6 New Orleans Saints 10-41 Indianapolis Colts RCA Dome
Sunday September 9 New York Giants 35-45 Dallas Cowboys Texas Stadium
Sunday September 16 San Diego Chargers 14-38 New England Patriots Gillette Stadium
Sunday September 23 Dallas Cowboys TBD Chicago Bears Soldier Field
Sunday September 30 Philadelphia Eagles TBD New York Giants Giants Stadium
Sunday October 7 Chicago Bears TBD Green Bay Packers Lambeau Field
Sunday October 14 New Orleans Saints TBD Seattle Seahawks Qwest Field
Sunday October 21 Pittsburgh Steelers TBD Denver Broncos INVESCO Field at Mile High
Sunday November 4 Dallas Cowboys TBD Philadelphia Eagles Lincoln Financial Field
Sunday November 11 Indianapolis Colts TBD San Diego Chargers Qualcomm Stadium
Sunday November 18 Chicago Bears TBD Seattle Seahawks Qwest Field
Sunday November 25 Philadelphia Eagles TBD New England Patriots Gillette Stadium
Sunday December 2 Cincinnati Bengals TBD Pittsburgh Steelers Heinz Field
Sunday December 9 Indianapolis Colts TBD Baltimore Ravens M&T Bank Stadium
Sunday December 16 Washington Redskins TBD New York Giants Giants Stadium
Sunday December 23 Tampa Bay Buccaneers TBD San Francisco 49ers Candlestick Park
Sunday December 30 Kansas City Chiefs TBD New York Jets Giants Stadium
If you notice there are some bigger matchups and NBC also does the dramatic storyline angle and rivalries too. It seems like Monday Night gets the leftovers.
from
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/tv/reviews/5338/sunday-night-fo otball-monday-night-football/
In its heyday, Monday Night Football was the sports broadcast of the week. With the lightning rod that was Howard Cosell in the booth and little else in its time slot, viewers tuned in by the millions to watch the Steel Curtain and other legendary teams of the '70s and early '80s. MNF gave us more than the Hank Williams Jr. anthem "Are You Ready for Some Football?" It helped define an era: colorful, entertaining, and occasionally unpredictable, it cemented a relationship between television and football.
Following Cosell's departure in 1985, however, MNF not only attracted fewer viewers, but also lost its pop cultural cache. ABC tried multiple new configurations of commentators to recapture the magic, but none matched the original's drawing power. Today, the Sunday night gameâ€â€regional contests aired by Fox, CBS, and ESPNâ€â€garners higher ratings. Beginning this season, the NFL decided the Sunday night game would be the "showcase" game of the week. With the new flex schedule, this means that whichever game league officials deem the marquee match-up of the week will now be shown on Sundays.
Official SiteThis year also marks a major shuffle in the networks with broadcasting rights to the games. In its ongoing effort to compete with major network television, ESPN doled out $1.1 billion, or around $20 million an hour, to broadcast MNF. ESPN (along with ABC, owned by Disney) appears determined to resurrect MNF from the dead, to bring a 21st-century appeal to the once beloved, now antiquated broadcast.
Leading the way in this re-imagining is color commentator Tony Kornheiser, a Washington Post columnist and co-host of ESPN's always excellent Pardon the Interruption. He's teamed with play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico and former quarterback/current purveyor of inane commentary Joe Theismann. Although the K-man looks like the elder statesman he is, his work on PTI has demonstrated that he can also be "cutting edge," combining blistering sarcasm and astute observation in a way that viewers young and old can all enjoy. He is, so we've been told, Cosell 2.0.
Or so the ESPN execs hoped. In reality, he's far from it. His preseason work on MNF was skewered by television critics and football fans alike, and the first regular season broadcast on 11 September wasn't any better. The regular team announced the first game of Monday night's unusual doubleheader, with the Washington Redskins hosting the Minnesota Vikings (a second game, the Oakland Raiders at the Chargers, announced by Brad Nessler, Dick Vermeil, and Ron Jaworski in San Diego, didn't end until after 1am on the east coast). For most of the 'Skins-Vikings game, Kornheiser and Theismann bickered like small children. During one unmemorable exchange, Kornheiser explained that Redskins coach Joe Gibbs' job was to "wander the sidelines." A horrified Theismannâ€â€who was quarterback for Gibbs' Super Bowl-winning Redskins back in 1982â€â€responded tersely, "No, he doesn't. He does some stuff." This is hardly the color commentating of dreams. Even the much-maligned Dennis Miller never almost came to fisticuffs with his fellow broadcasters.
While it appears the Kornheiser Experiment is set on a course toward abysmal failure, MNF's underlying philosophy is also shifted. Rather than reassert the old-school parameters of football for football fans, it is opened up to a broader audience, embracing sports' participation in a massive entertainment industry. At one point, Jamie Foxx appeared in the broadcast booth, declaring, "I'm huge fans of all you guys." He also plugged his good friend and Collateral co-star Tom Cruiseâ€â€whom the ESPN cameras showed frequently sitting in the booth of 'Skins owner Daniel Snyderâ€â€as "the most genuine person you'll ever meet."
The fact that Snyder and Cruise have signed a much-publicized deal following the movie star's even more publicized split with Paramount only highlights the multifaceted intertwinings of media and sports. For football fans, the image of Tom Cruise holding Katie Holmes' hand while chatting with his new boss is considerably less compelling than, say, the evening's performance by oldest quarterback in the league Brad Johnson. But the cameras repeatedly showcased Snyder's new business partner, an emblem of the multimedia "synergy" that appears to be driving MNF.
In stark contrast, the real coup d'état for NBC's Sunday night venture wasn't, as many commentators believed, the return of football to the network, but rather, the convincing of John Madden and Al Michaels to jump ship and join the team. This automatically brought a level of credibility to the broadcast that ESPN only wishes MNF still commanded. With the increasing visibility of his franchise video games, Madden is the ultimate broadcaster, in spite of his occasionally nonsensical commentary. He and play-by-play announcer Michaelsâ€â€originally rumored to be staying at MNF before he decided to stick with his longtime booth partnerâ€â€mesh better than anyone else in the game. And they don't need pop star references to make their show entertaining or smart.
And still, NBC's Thursday night (7 September) broadcast of the Dolphins-Steelers game also included a few too many famous hangers-on, with a pregame show featuring celebs ranging from Diddy to Pink. And really, Madden and Michaels tried a little too hard to seem hip. On Sunday night (10 September), the "Manning Bowl 2006" pitted the Giants' Eli Manning against Peyton and the Colts for the first time in the brothers' NFL careers. The media buildup to this match was deafening, and NBC followed through on Sunday with repeated shots of the Manning parents and silly puff pieces about the boys' prodigious childhoods. At some point, it's all the same drivel. Fortunately for the Peacock, M and M tend to keep a focus on football.
Football, after all, is what these primetime broadcasts should be about. And that can be football in a larger context: during the halftime show of the 'Skins-Vikings game, ESPN featured a thoughtful piece about 9/11. John Gruden, Tiki Barber, Joe Andruzzi, and a host of others weighed in with their thoughts about the day, the cancellation of football that week and what it meant personally, professionally, and even nationally when the league returned on 23 September. The lesson offered by the surprisingly reverential and moving documentary was that football is bigger than SNF or MNF can ever be. It's also more meaningful to its fans than all the non-sports stars and references the networks have been including. To borrow from Williams Jr., whose anthem was yet again revived this past Monday, we are ready for some football. But that's all we want.
Sorry, I didn't mean for this to be that long, but rest assured the main games are Sunday Night instead of Monday now.
