ESPN Sunday Night Football

ESPN Sunday Night Football is the ESPN cable network's weekly television broadcasts of Sunday evening National Football League (NFL) games. The first ESPN Sunday night broadcast occurred on November 8, 1987, while the last one aired on January 1, 2006.

Former NFL Commissioner (1989-2005) Paul Tagliabue credits ESPN with raising the "profile" of the league, from turning "a potential six- or seven-hour television experience into a twelve-hour television experience."

History
ESPN earned broadcast rights to a series of Sunday night NFL games, which were to air during the second half of the season, beginning in the 1987 season. ESPN kept this contract until the 1997 season, by which time the NFL had expanded its Sunday night offerings to the full season and added Turner Sports as a broadcast partner. During the first season of ESPN Sunday Night NFL (as it was then branded) in 1987, the network's announcing booth had Mike Patrick, Roy Firestone, and a weekly "guest color commentator." Joe Theismann took over as lead analyst beginning in 1988.

During the first season, the game between the New York Giants and New England Patriots (the very first regular season game aired by ESPN), had WABC-TV (the American Broadcasting Company's flagship station out of New York City) produce a completely separate telecast from ESPN's (rather than an over-the-air station simply simulcasting ESPN's broadcast in the competing teams' home markets). The reason behind this was that WABC's union contract at the time prohibited non-union workers, such as those at ESPN, from producing live events for WABC. The WABC broadcasts involved play-by-play man Corey McPherrin and Frank Gifford and Lynn Swann on color commentary.

Beginning in 1998, ESPN broadcast the entire slate of Sunday night games (now officially rebranded as Sunday Night Football), and had exclusive rights to any night game other than the season opener and regular Monday night games, which aired on ABC. Thus, ESPN would usually have a few weekends each season with games on both Saturday (sometimes Thursday instead) and Sunday nights. Also in 1998, Paul Maguire joined Patrick and Theismann in the booth after re-joining ESPN after several years as a color commentator for NBC. Beginning in 1999, Suzy Kolber, who had recently rejoined ESPN from Fox Sports, served as the sideline reporter; Kolber replaced Solomon Wilcots, who joined CBS as a color commentator. In 2002, ESPN's SNF crew covered the new Thursday, opening night kickoff game. In 2004, Pat Summerall replaced Patrick for the preseason and for several regular season weeks following Patrick's recovery from open-heart surgery.

After the 2005 season, ESPN ended this package in favor of picking up the broadcast rights to Monday Night Football from ABC. NBC picked up the rights to ESPN's Sunday night games. To replace Sunday Night Football ESPN moved its late-season Sunday Night Baseball broadcasts back to the network and replaced most of the rest of the open weeks with NBA telecasts.

Music
From 1987-97, ESPN used various themes for its NFL coverage, reflecting its separate management from sister company ABC Sports (now ESPN on ABC) at the time.

In 1998, as Disney began consolidating ESPN and ABC Sports, ESPN's NFL coverage began using themes associated with Monday Night Football. In-game use of these themes ended after 2000, in favor of another original theme also referred to as "Sirens" (for featuring sirens prominently).

When ESPN gained the Monday night games, they once again began using the traditional Monday Night Football themes, but with increased frequency. See Monday Night Football for more info on music used during that package.

Significant games

 * First preseason game: Chicago Bears at Miami Dolphins, August 13, 1987
 * First regular season game: New England Patriots at New York Giants, November 8, 1987 (Giants won, 17–10)
 * First telecast during opening week of season: Oakland Raiders at Kansas City Chiefs, September 6, 1998 (Chiefs won, 28–8)
 * First regular season game outside the U.S.: San Francisco 49ers vs. Arizona Cardinals at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, Mexico, October 2, 2005 (Cardinals won 31–14; see also: Fútbol Americano)
 * Last telecast: St. Louis Rams at Dallas Cowboys, January 1, 2006 (Rams won, 21–10)

Joe Namath incident
During a game between the New England Patriots at New York Jets on December 20, 2003, former Jets quarterback Joe Namath in a sideline interview with Suzy Kolber twice stated that he wanted to kiss her, and "couldn't care less about the team strugg-a-ling." Namath later apologized and blamed the incident on his obvious intoxication. Soon after, Namath entered an outpatient alcoholism treatment program. Namath chronicled the episode, including his battle with alcoholism in his book, Namath (ISBN 0-67003-329-4).

Commentators

 * Mike Patrick (Play-by-play, 1987–2003 and Oct 2004–2005)
 * Pat Summerall (Play-by-play, Sep–Oct 2004)
 * Roy Firestone (Color commentator, 1987)
 * Joe Theismann (Color commentator, 1988–2005)
 * Paul Maguire (Color commentator, 1998–2005)
 * Mark Malone (Sideline reporter, 1994–1996)
 * Ron Jaworski (Sideline reporter, 1997)
 * Solomon Wilcots (Sideline reporter, 1998–2000)
 * Suzy Kolber (Sideline reporter, 2001–2005)
 * Chris Berman (Studio host)
 * Mike Tirico: (#2 Play-by-play, 2005)
 * Sterling Sharpe: (#2 Color commentator, 2005)

Guest commentators (1987 only)

 * Larry Csonka (twice)
 * John Matuszak
 * Roger Staubach
 * Jim Brown
 * Ed Marinaro
 * Tom Jackson
 * O. J. Simpson