NBC: Sunday night's all right for football
PASADENA, Calif. -- Say it together, everyone: Sunday Night Football.
This has been in the works for some time now, but, according to NBC execs, it's likely to be a shock to football fans' systems this fall, when the nation's weekly marquee football game shifts back a day.
ESPN, which recently bought the rights to ABC's iconic Monday Night Football, may beg to differ on which night is the NFL's marquee night. But at a television writers' conference here Saturday, executives at NBC -- which inked the deal on its six-year, $3.6 billion NFL contract in the spring of 2005 -- launched a campaign to explain why ``NBC Sunday Night Football" belongs in the natural course of events.
`` [The NFL] determined that Sunday night was the night with the greatest growth potential," said Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports & Olympics, who noted that on the West Coast, people have had to rush home on Monday nights to catch a game that starts at 6 p.m.
Besides, Ebersol said, it's a good deal for NBC, which doesn't have to worry about breaking into the ``Tonight Show" -- and whose parent company,
And despite one writer's suggestion that, by Sunday night, the nation might suffer from ``football fatigue," NBC's broadcasters insisted that the ir Big Game will fare well. After a day of gorging on football, the public will be hungry for recaps and ``wall-to-wall highlights," said sportscaster Bob Costas, who will host the weekly 7 p.m. pregame show, ``Football Night in America," with analysts Cris Collinsworth, Sterling Sharpe, and former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Jerome Bettis.
``This is a paradigm shift," said Collinsworth, who recently joined NBC from Fox. ``It's sort of one-stop shopping, that if I miss anything during the day, if I tune in from 7 o'clock until midnight, I promise you, you will be caught up with the entirety of the National Football League."
Once the game begins at 8, it will look, to a large extent, like it has on Monday nights on ABC : Al Michaels doing play-by-play, John Madden with analysis, and former `` Monday Night Football" producer Fred Gaudelli at the helm. (He's the man credited with introducing America to the yellow line at the first down marker.)
One difference: The lineup for the final seven games isn't set in advance. Instead, the NFL will choose the matchups 12 days before each game, to avoid the recent run of end-of-season games that feature teams with losing records. (Already inked into the schedule: the Sept. 24 Denver Broncos-New England Patriots game and the Nov. 5 matchup between the Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts.)
NBC also plans to try to woo more female viewers, largely with the help of Andrea Kremer, the sideline feature reporter who joins NBC from ESPN. On Fridays this fall, Kremer will appear on ``The Today Show" to pitch female-friendly NFL stories. The first, previewing the Sept. 10 Colts-New York Giants game, will be a profile of Peyton and Eli Manning's mother.
Madden, for his part, thinks Sunday is an ideal night to bring women into the football fold. ``Like, the wife says, `I'll tell you what, why don't we make a deal,' " he told TV writers on Saturday. `` `You take me to lunch or brunch or a movie in the afternoon, then I'll watch the game with you tonight.' "
``But remember, the idea of the football widow is passe ," said Kremer, the only woman on the panel.
``I know," Madden said. ``And you can make deals."
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com 
