I am in the process of watching the premiere of MNF with a regular season game. I am watching it on TiVo so I just saw the Clinton Portis TD. I wanted to mention the production values on the program and some other notes.
The opening was really well done I thought. It may be semi-special for the opening but still. It was a two partner. The first part was a short film with a special agent running through Washington DC. The agent is being chased and finally makes it to the ESPN truck. The MNF intro DVD is inserted and then the normal intro started. The second intro started with the governator Arnold picking up a helmet and unleashing an emp like blast to begin to change the city (fictional computer generated not DC). The city then changes into a massive football stadium with high rises becoming seating and roads becoming yard markers. It was really well done and I can even except the massive GMC advertising embedded in.
They later had the standard MNF intro by Hank Williams Jr. It is still better than Pink on Sunday Night Football, but it just seems to be aging. It was short thankfully. It had a wide range of rockers from Little Richard, Steve Van Zandt and Joe Perry.
The picture quality of the game is really amazing. I watched a bunch of games on Sunday Ticket HD yesterday and this just looks better. It may be that DirecTV is allocating more bandwidth to ESPN HD or it may be the ESPN production itself, either way it looks good. The graphics for scores and other stuff is done quite well. It seems ESPN has just invested more in HD than some others have.
The calling of the game seems to be going well. Tericho is a good play by play guy and Theisman is a pretty good color and football technical announcer. So far Kornheiser seems to be doing well. He is interjected nicely and even seems to be fitting in. I didn't watch any of the pre-season games and from what I have heard Tony was rough at times. He is a good add-on of a person between the average fan and Theisman in football knowledge. He asks questions that many people watching might ask. He also reads emails which seem to add a new twist.
In the middle of the second quarter Jamie Foxx joined the other guys in the booth. Usually when some random star does this the result is some thinly veiled commercial for a project. However as far as I could tell Foxx was not pimping anything. Also Foxx was really good in the booth. He played high school football and then played a character in Any Given Sunday as well. He knows his football and was a really entertaining addition to the booth for about 20 minutes. There was some talk and joking about Tom Cruise who was in Dan Snyder's owners booth next to the broadcasting booth.
The half time show appears to be at least partially about 9/11. I will probably not watch much of it. Don't need it from ESPN or any other TV channel really. The half time show is sponsored by Lexus, too bad they didn't take the opportunity to show a HD commercial.
That gets me to halftime. I may add some final thoughts at the end of game, if I am still awake.
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