Last night, ABC called it a wrap for Monday Night Football, a TV institution on a par with I Love Lucy, Seinfeld, and The Cosby Show. In fact, it outlasted the lot of them combined. It moves to ESPN, and let's face it, even if you have cable and hang at sports bars (for the women or men I'm sure), free football moving to cable is never a warm moment.

I mean really, image Cheers or Living Single moving to the Wifetime, uh Lifetime Network. Yeah, I thought so.

Of course MNF was two entitles. The Game and The Show. The first 15 years, the game was secondary to The Show. And if you are under 35 or so, I pity you, because you'll truly never get it. Dandy Don Meredith, Frank Gifford, and the legendary Humble Howard Cosell created a dynamic that will never, EVER be duplicated. Don't think that ABC didn't keep trying to do so either. When MNF-The Show jumped the shark, MNF-The Game lived on.

But when the show was about The Show, Lord help us. It was Don deflating Howard, Howard pontificating, Frank (or Keith Jackson) marching forward through the flak, not quite oblivious, but knowing that SOMEBODY had to keep the show grounded in this reality. At its best, it was by a thread.

It was the impromptu moments that made even a dog game worth watching, because you just didn't know what would happen next.

And since it was on free TV, you knew you could talk about it with a co-worker, and even a female one. My mom would have paid good money to throw a brick through the TV set at Howard, just like a bar in Denver famously did. Mom didn't hate Howie either - it was the toupee that irritated her. The Voice just closed the deal.

You wonder about the future of The Game though. Monday Night was a sign of Respect. I'm talking La Costa Nostra respect. When your team played on Monday Night, it was like having 45 instant Made Men. Instant national recognition. The entire nation would be watching, and in the pre-cable, pre-Direct TV-NFL package era, that meant EVERYTHING.

Teams that weren't MNF regulars like Dallas, Oakland, and Miami knew the deal - don't screw that #$%# up. Win! At least be competitive! The Oilers got smoked bad on Monday Night in the early 70’s and didn't show up again for years. Somehow, the Chargers made Monday Night in the mid-1970's when they stunk, and it was big news. The city didn't want the stigma of a blacked-out Monday Night game, and bought up the extra tickets.

Back in the day people. Back In The Day...

Alas, you will never have a Howard Cosell again. We're far too PC a society. Bill Walton probably comes closest in sheer obnoxiousness, and the TNT NBA crew has amazingly funny chemistry with Charles Barkley, Ernie Johnson, and Kenny Smith. But they're on cable.

With that in mind, here are my favorite memories of MNF, in no special order:

1. Earl Campbell's Coming Out Party - The Perfect Storm of The Show and The Game. Houston and Miami. Don Shula and Bum Phillips. The Tyler Rose already was a sensation his rookie year, with a package of power and speed not seen in the NFL since that Brown guy was blowing up linebackers in Cleveland. The Fish featured Delvin Williams (out of Kashmere High in Houston), who was the number two rusher in the league behind Campbell. Houston hadn't been that amped since Santa Ana rolled The Alamo. That night over 53,000 lunatics packed the Astrodome and actually silenced Cosell for a minute with a 60 minute roar that seldom let up. Powder blue pom-poms. Love Ya Blue signs. A corny but infectious fight song.

If  you ever wonder why the NFL wanted football back in Houston, just pull out a tape of that game.

Oh, and Earl rolled for 199 yards and 4 TDs, including a clinching 83 yard run that still sucks the breath out of the room. Houston 35, Miami 30. Some still say it was the greatest game in Monday Night History. You will get no argument from me.

2. Halftime Highlights - For those of you born in the ESPN era, you don't understand how it was to see maybe 2-3 games a week. And that was IT. No ESPN, very little footage of other games. Except for when Howard would do his halftime highlights from around the NFL. Years later, we all find out that he was watching a monitor and recording what he saw, just as we would do it. And we didn't care.

"Joe ...Willie...Namath throwing to THAT MAN - RICH-ARD CASTER, down the middle, touchdown JETS!"

Don't act like you didn't do a "Cosell". We all did. I knew a girl in junior high who did.

3. Bo Knows The Boz - Some called it the Irresistible Force and the Immovable Object. Bull. It was the Phenomenally Talented meeting the Phenomenally Hyped. Since Earl, only Bo Jackson could come with the power (6-1 225), and the speed (allegedly 4.25) like that. His rookie year, he met the Other Rookie. Brian Bosworth. A tackling machine in college, his talent was only exceeded by his mouth. I never saw a white guy channel Ali like that, so I can't be too mad at him.

Then came the game. Bo smoked Boz on a short TD run, I mean blew him up, and it was showed repeatedly for the next....hell, I think I saw it this morning. Jim Brown grumped, "You'd think that Bo was the first man to run somebody over..." Jim, it wasn't his fault (or yours) that MNF didn't catch up drilling Sam Huff my brother.

Then the exclamation point, Bo turns left on a pitch, and goes 91 yards, posterized the Boz again, and ran away from half the Seahawks as he took it to the house. It was capped with the greatest Non-Celebration Celebration, as Bo ran through the end zone and into the tunnel. Rumor has it he made it to the Bay Area before coming back. A perfect ending, demanding a curtain call. In a road game.

4. Sky Fan - Bears-Packers game. Pretty ordinary game...can't remember the year (it was the early 90's) but an extra point is attempted. And this was the tunnel end of Soldier’s Field. The net hadn't gone up, and it was all this guy needed to leap from the stands and catch the ball as it passed through the uprights - at least 15 feet off the ground before gravity took over and he crashed to earth. That is an American hero!

5. Tony Dorsett Takes It To The House - My Vikings and the hated Cowboys. Danny White hands off to T.D. from his own 1. Dorsett, who might have been the fastest great back in NFL history got a seam, blasted through hit, veered right to the sidelines, and it was over. 99 yards. A record that can be equaled, but not surpassed.

And the Cowboys only had 10 men on field. Damn.

Well, at least the Vikes won the game.

6. Howard Cosell and The Little #### - It was the Cowboys and Redskins 1983, and Washington wideout Alvin Garrett, one of the famed Smurfs, was undressing the Cowboys secondary with his running after the catch. At 5-8 and weighing slightly more than Sarah Jessica Parker, he basically skittered all over the field. Howard could nothing but exclaim in admiration, "Look at that little #### run!" I guess waterbug, squirrel, and jackrabbit were taken. Worse, Alvin Garrett was black. Oops.

But the funny part was, Howard got embarrassed, and took a LOT of heat. But but no one black I knew thought he meant any harm. And well they shouldn't, after all black athletes from Ali, to Carlos and Smith to Ray Leonard never had a better friend in the media. It was just a bad - and hysterically funny - choice of words. Humble Howie survived. But the incident did hurt him. A pity. Howard was no Al Campanis.

7. The Juice Was On The Loose - Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, we all liked O.J. Simpson. It didn't matter if he ran through an airport or the Steelers - we wanted The Juice On The Loose. It was a game in Cincinnati and when Riverfront Stadium got wet, everything on the field started to hydroplane. People, footballs, refs...you'd better have an anchor. O.J. gets the ball makes two or three of his patented sick moves, breaks into the broken field - and then it gets fun.

He goes right, puts on the brakes - and slips on his butt. Slides a good five yards, gets up in one smooth motion, cuts back completely across the field and outraces at least four Bengals into the endzone.  At least four others still have groin issues from his cutback.

8. Obi-Wan Montana Strikes Back - Denver and Kansas City met in a 90's Monday Night game with a high level of hype. One of the rare times John Elway and Joe Montana faced each other. And the game matched the hype. Less than two minutes to go, and Mr. Ed led one of his patented drives to put the Donkeys up by four. One small problem. He left about a minute on the clock. And just like Obi-Wan, Joe cut off Anakin Elway and the Broncos off at the knees with a 70 yard drive in about 50 seconds, capped by a TD to Willie Davis (?) with 5 seconds on the clock.

I tell ya, Joe left Mile High Stadium with nothing but smoldering stumps.

Legend has it that Montana whispered to Elway during their post-game hug, "I am the master..."

9. Randall Cunningham Goes Straight "Matrix" - Giants and Eagles. Randall always had a little something special for the Giants. This 1992 game was no different. From around the 10 yard line, Rocket Randal rolled right. Carl Banks zeros in on him and drills him square in the midsection. Knocks Cunningham into a three point stance, but his knees never touched the ground. Uses his off hand to stabilize himself, and straightens up, backs up and fires a TD to Keith Jackson.

The only thing better than the play was the look of utter and absolute disbelief on the face of Carl Banks.

10. John Lennon Visits The Booth - I don't even remember the game. I can't tell you who played. But it was John Lennon, less than year before his death hanging out with Cosell and Meredith. It sounds really trite to say "you had to be there", but you really and truly did. Kayne West might get a similar reaction today, maybe Diddy. But who would play Cosell? Who COULD?

10a. The Lonesome Oiler Fan - It was the early 70's and the Oilers were getting killed (yet again), and in the 4th period, the cameras caught a solitary fan. He caught them too. With a middle finger. Meredith, in a superb moment of adlibbing, said, "He's saying the Oilers are Number One."

11. George Blanda's Last Stand - It must have been 1974. The United States was 198 years old. The NFL was 55 years old. Blanda was 46.

It was late in a game against the Dallas Cowboys, and Blanda comes in to play quarterback. The guys in the booth had a field day with The Old Man. Humor with more than a little love for a guy who inspires me when I play ball in my late 30's.

My mom, ever the voice of sanity and common sense, was in disbelief more than anyone, "That old goat? They're going kill that man, why won't sit down before he gets hurt?" Dad and I were dying laughing. And we all were rooting for The Old Goat to throw one more TD.

And he did, I think he drilled a strike to Cliff Branch. It was the last TD pass (number 242 I think), of an incredible career.

Ok, gang. Now it's your turn!