This comes straight from the be-careful-what-you-wish-for department.
Before the National Football League season began, ABC wished long and hard to be reunited with the Bears on Monday nights. The NFL genie granted the network’s request, not once, but three times.
ABC now would like to have those wishes back. After going five years without them, “Monday Night Football” finally gets the Bears, only to have them turn into dogs.
The 2-7 Bears going up against the 4-5 St. Louis Rams isn’t exactly the marquee matchup ABC envisioned for this mid-November date.
ABC is trying to sound excited, though the crew has to feel like a kid who got socks for his birthday.
“The Bears still have a big star in Brian Urlacher,” producer Fred Gaudelli says. “The Rams are playing to get back into it. I still think Bears-Rams is an attractive game.”
Gaudelli, though, is preparing for the worst. Getting stuck with lackluster, if not terrible, late-season games has become routine for ABC.
With the NFL more unpredictable than ever, the network has had more than its share of games that aren’t ready for prime time.
Since 1999, ABC has telecast 17 Monday night games in November, December or January in which one of the two participants had a losing record before kickoff.
This marks the fourth time in that period when both teams are below .500.
The low point came on Jan. 3, 2000, when the 4-11 San Francisco 49ers traveled to the 4-11 Atlanta Falcons in a game that lived down to expectations. Two seasons ago, ABC endured the 5-10 Dallas Cowboys for a Christmas night game against the 12-3 Tennessee Titans.
Now ABC is almost as upset over the Bears’ current fate as are their fans. Coming off a 13-3 season, the Bears looked like a prime bet for maximum exposure when the schedules were announced in the spring.
But there are no sure things in the NFL anymore.
That’s not an insurmountable problem for Fox Sports and CBS Sports, which telecast the NFL on Sundays. They can quickly audible and showcase other games. CBS did that last week, downgrading the status of the New England Patriots-Bears game.
ABC and ESPN, however, have no choices on Monday and Sunday nights, respectively. They are stuck.
That’s why this season’s Bears will become yet another argument for ABC to use a flexible schedule. Make that two arguments, since the Bears are set for another Monday nighter Dec. 9 at Miami. They could go into that game 2-10.
Play-by-play man Al Michaels has made opinions so well known that for a change for pace he was asked what Howard Cosell would say about the issue. Laughing, he launched into his Cosell voice, saying: “The NFL knows that it is imperative to get the situation rectified. Common sense dictates that a flexible schedule should be implemented.”
Gaudelli uses his own voice.
“I feel like it’s a broken record,” he says. “The NFL knows it’s a problem. It’s their problem too.”
It behooves everyone for ABC to have a decent Monday night matchup. The proposal would allow a better game to be shifted from Sunday to Monday within a certain time frame.
Besides the logistical issues, there are two main obstacles: Fox Sports and CBS. Charity toward a competitor is not a strong suit in television.
The issue is expected to come up again in league meetings during the off-season, but that won’t help ABC now. Poor matchups haven’t been the network’s only problem this year.
Even the anticipated matchups have turned into duds. Nine of the 10 Monday night games have been decided by 10 points or more; only San Francisco’s 28-21 victory over Seattle could be regarded as close. The average margin of victory is 15.9 points.
Two weeks ago, Gaudelli and crew were gearing up for a big Monday night game between Green Bay and Miami. But a Packers blowout had almost one-third of the audience tuning out by the fourth quarter.
“If before the season the NFL said you can have any game for that week, you would have said you want Green Bay-Miami,” Gaudelli says. “It’s just a happenstance. Unfortunately, it’s a weekly happenstance.”
ABC might not know what to do if it actually had a close Monday game. And the network probably would have to go back to the rulebook to see how overtime works.
“There’s no use crying about it,” Gaudelli says. “We’ll be ready when it happens.”
It doesn’t figure to happen Monday, not with the Bears beat up physically and mentally. Gaudelli is trying to put up a good front because that’s what they do on television.
“Would I love the Bears to be 7-2? Sure I would,” Gaudelli says. John Madden “has this saying: `Does it sound good?’ Bears-Rams sounds like a good NFL game.”
Maybe back in the spring it did. Now Bears-Rams sounds like a reason for the rest of the country to check out what’s on the other networks.
Monday night clunkers
Teams appearing recently on “Monday Night Football” after Nov. 1 with losing records.
Nov. 6, 2000: Minnesota (7-1) at Green Bay (3-5)
Nov. 27, 2000: Green Bay (5-6) at Carolina (4-7)
Dec. 3, 2000: Kansas City (5-7) at New England (3-9)
Dec. 25, 2000: Dallas (5-10) at Tennessee (12-3)
Nov. 12, 2001: Baltimore (5-3) at Tennessee (3-4)
Nov. 19, 2001: Giants (5-4) at Minnesota (3-5)
Nov. 26, 2001: Tampa Bay (4-5) at St. Louis (8-1)
Dec. 3, 2001: Green Bay (7-3) at Jacksonville (3-7)
Dec. 10, 2001: Indianapolis (4-7) at Miami (8-3)
Dec. 22, 2001: Tennessee (6-7) at Oakland (10-3)
Jan. 7, 2001: Minnesota (5-10) at Baltimore (9-6)
Monday: Bears (2-7) at St. Louis (4-5)
