I went to YouTube to seek out the classic opening sequence from ABC’s Monday Night Football that I remember from the late ’70s/early ’80s. Well… I remember the music. I didn’t remember the visuals, which is why I sought it out. I was looking for something akin to this (regrettably, the only clip I could find on YouTube featuring any of the “classic” MNF music in its original context):
And here’s one that I remembered upon seeing it, but hadn’t recalled before:
But what I wasn’t expecting to find was this — the version from 1973:
I’ve always been interested in design and logos, even when I was 6 (1980). So it’s cool, thanks to YouTube, to be able to step back in time and see these gone-but-not-forgotten visuals from television’s past. And once again, I am reminded that as crazy as the things I remember from my early childhood (say, from about 1978 to 1983) are compared to how they are today, just a few years earlier they were immeasurably weirder.
Ha! It seems that the NFL has always been the home of inappropriate and bewildering “motion graphics”.
Yeah, I really don’t get the motion graphics in the 1980 intro, but I remember thinking it was cool how the logo shot up vertically and then curved to face the viewer. Not that it made any sense whatsoever. But there’s something pretty neat looking to me in the old low-tech way this kind of animation was done. I have no idea how they did it, but I’m sure it cost them a lot of money. And that vertical thing I described reminds me a lot of the effect of the Enterprise going into warp in the first couple of Star Trek movies.
Wow, that 1973 opening has everything but peace symbols. Funny that in the 1978 opening (the graphic on the bottom at the beginning identifies it as coming from 1979, but listening to the whole thing shows it comes from 11/20/78), the 28 team helmets are arranged in a 6 x 5 grid with two empty squares, but the 1980 opening has them completely filling a 7 x 4 grid. Someone must’ve had a multiplicative revelation.
Maybe in 1978 they were optimistic that there would be an NFL expansion before ABC redesigned the opening sequence. Or maybe in 1980 they were optimistic that widescreen was just around the corner.
Or maybe in both years they were too doped up to care.