The first of three NFL doubleheaders for ESPN and ABC took place on Monday night. While WFAN host Evan Roberts was happy to watch two games, he just wished the start times were a little more spread out.
On Evan & Tiki on Tuesday, Roberts told co-host Tiki Barber that he would prefer that if there were two games on Monday Night Football, that you have the games kick off at 7 and 9:30 p.m.
“At least as the 9:30 game is starting, it’s early, we watch the end of the 7 o’clock game and then there’s more of a split,” Roberts said.
ESPN in the past would usually only have the one doubleheader in Week 1 or Week 2 and then have a game kick off on the East Coast in the early window followed by a West Coast game later. Roberts said having a game on ESPN and then another on ABC kind of took away from what MNF is supposed to be.
“The beauty of Monday Night Football is we all just sit around and watch one game,” he said.
Tiki Barber chimed in saying start time is irrelevant if it’s a good matchup that people will want to tune in for. He pointed to the massive ratings draw the Colorado/Colorado State game over the weekend was, pointing out that the game ended after 2 a.m. eastern time. But Barber ultimately agreed with Roberts on the spreading out of start times with regards to Monday night.
“It just felt too on top of each other, and they kept cutting in like, ‘Oh this happened in this game and Deshaun Watson did this,” Barber said. “It was weird how they were interrupting those games.”
Evan said even though it’s not going to be a regular occurrence for Monday nights, there’s a time and a place for the jumping around checking in on multiple games happening at once.
“Football Sundays are for us to have the million TVs and flip around,” he said. “Football Mondays are for all of us to just sit around and watch one game.”
