Monday Night Mayhem: The Inside Story of ABC's Monday Night Football

by Marc Gunther, Bill Carter

A behind-the-scenes look at the personalities and events that have shaped Monday Night Football

Genres: Sports, Football, Nonfiction

384 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1988

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bill Carter will go on to write better books about late night television, one of which would become the mini-series THE LATE SHIFT. But he cut his teeth, along with co-author Marc Gunter, on this thorough yet swift look at a television and sports phenom that's really the larger story of capitalism: innovation leads to sameness which results in the innovation left behind in the file room of history. The drama is Shakespeare meets high school lunchroom, with everyone wearing their egos and insecurities on the outside of their clothes. But MONDAY NIGHT MAYHEM leads us, gently, yes, to a difficult question: Are those the kind of people who make great things? Not jerks, per se but people with half formed ideas but full tanks of ambition, people with rough edges who make stupid mistakes, which seem stupid but the risk is higher? There isn't an answer at the end of this book but its a question and a conundrum that hasn't aged a bit since this book came out in 1994.

Postscript: Can you enjoy this book if you don't care about football? Yes. If you care about business, media, entertainment and human drama. But MONDAY NIGHT MAYHEM has a natural limitation: Announcing and broadcasting is all about smoothing over errors. And at a national television network level, errors are small and rarely noticed by the viewer. Which means its pretty much impossible for the authors to describe the "fiascos" the characters in this book commit while announcing football games, mistakes that were so pivotal to their fates. Why? Because they seem like petty nothings to us, the reader, even though they seem career-ending to the characters.

[Jason Shebilske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good history of Monday Night Football, but there were definitely some signs of age, and the end felt a bit like a whirlwind with so many things going on. Mayhem, indeed.

[Robert James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw the first Monday night game back in 1970. Jets vs Browns. I was allowed to stay up on Monday night until the halftime highlights were over. This was before ESPN and the internet. Halftime highlights on Monday nights were the only place you could see highlights of the Sunday games. I like books about television history and Monday Night Football was can't miss TV for years. You had to watch to see what Cosell and Meredith were going to say and do. The game was secondary even though it was usually a great matchup. This book does a great job of reviewing the early years but loses steam reviewing the years after Cosell and Meredith left much like Monday Night Football did.

[Matt Lohr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been a fan for years of "Monday Night Mayhem," the 2002 TNT adaptation of Marc Gunther and Bill Carter's book about the tumultuous early days of ABC's legendary "Monday Night Football" broadcast, with John Turturro's dynamite performance as the most loved and hated sportscaster of his era (and maybe any era), Howard Cosell. But I had never read the book before now, and am glad I finally got to dig into Marc Gunther and Bill Carter's deeply researched, crisply written anatomy of the life and times of arguably the most important regular sports series in network television history.

The extra time offered by a book's length gives Gunther and Carter the time to dig into many fascinating details and notions that the film couldn't address. Sure, there's plenty of great detail about the love-hate relationship between the "classic" booth lineup of Cosell, play-by-play man Frank Gifford, and folksy color commentator Don Meredith. But the book also digs with great detail into the financial machinations that made ad real estate on the MNF broadcast among the most expensive in television up to that time, the front-office shifts at ABC that gradually, some would say irreparably, changed what the broadcast would be, and the wide range of personalities beyond those three colorful figures that affected MNF in their own ways. It details booth regulars successful (the likable, professionally serious Dan Dierdorf), problematic (the gifted but not-dedicated-enough Alex Karras), and flat-out disastrous (Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, whose nasty style kept him from making it past a handful of exhibition games). And of course, it digs deep into the minds of the men behind the cameras: The sybaritic but innovative director Chet Forte, the savvy but occasional overwhelmed producer Don Ohlmeyer, and of course, Roone Arledge, the production genius whose vision made MNF into a broadcasting and sports juggernaut...and whose loftier ambitions threatened to sink the hottest show in sports television at its zenith.

The book only has one real weakness, but it's a major one: It never quite defines what exactly it is that made Cosell, Gifford, and Meredith such an unbeatable commentating combination. It tells us over and over that the blend of these three men's styles was inimitable, but it never really digs into what MADE it inimitable. But perhaps that's the whole point. Sometimes you can't define magic. You can just acknowledge and appreciate it. And "Monday Night Mayhem" is a fine and compulsively readable act of acknowledgement and appreciation indeed.

[Patricia Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice