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• Crowning Moment of Awesome:
  • And not always by the players. In one MNF game at Chicago's Soldier Field, a field-goal kick went over the catching net and a fan jumped from the stands caught the ball in flight and landed cleanly on his feet.
  • The special Friday game on Christmas Eve in 2004. Bonus points for being a Week 16 game for the NFC North title.
• Crowning Moment of Funny:
  • Sometimes intentional, sometimes not, in the play-by-play booth. Usually provided by Don Meredith.
  • The cameras once focused on a fan sitting by himself during the end of a blowout game at Houston's Astrodome. When he realized the camera was on him, he gave the nation The Bird.
  Meredith: "He's telling us his team is number one!"
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: The New Orleans Saints re-open the Superdome following the horrors of Katrina with a concert from Green Day and U2, then beat up their rivals the Falcons.
• Earworm: Both "Are You Ready" and the classic "Heavy Action" theme.
  • "Are You Ready" is of course Hank Williams Jr.'s Monday Night remake of "All My Rowdy Friends are Coming Over Tonight."
  • In the Don Meredith years, his rendition of "Turn Out the Lights, the Party's Over" after every game.
• Memetic Mutation: ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?
  • I wanna kiss you!
  • A lesser known variant: In 1975, Alex Karras (filling in for the then-departed Don Meridith) quipped that Raiders lineman Otis Sistrunk was from "The University of Mars" (Sistrunk's school was listed as "U.S. Mars" which stood for "US Marines"). From then on, the Raiders' changed Sistrunk's college in ther official literature from "US Mars" or "none" to "U. of Mars".
    • He wasn't far off: Mars was named for the Roman god of war.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Theismann break. 'Nuff said.
• Never Live It Down: Howard Cosell's infamous referral to Redskins' receiver Alvin Garrett as "that little monkey".
  • Break the Haughty: The subsequent vilification this incident sparked (not helped by the fact that Cosell was rather disliked by his peers)
• The Scrappy: Dennis Miller - for every fan who loved his out-there metaphors and similes, there were nine more who just wanted him to shut up.
• Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Many of the standard parts of sports broadcasting - heavy use of on-screen graphics and instant replay, multiple camera angles - were innovated by MNF.
• What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: This mid-1970s Monday Night Football intro (The WTF kicks in at the 0:20 mark).