Everyone bellyaches about delays for airport security, global warming, the health care crisis, and other very serious problems. But right about now, I’m pissed about something far more parochial, and that’s the fact that last year, they switched Monday Night Football to cable tube. Like some percentage of Americans, I don’t have cable, and so Monday nights aren’t the same. That’s not to say I sat by the TV with chips and beer and watched every last boring Jax v. Titans game to the finish. I usually just had the game on in the background and occasionally glanced up, knowing that I’d never miss an important play given how often plays get replayed and replayed and replayed over the course of an NFL broadcast.

No more. To tune in, I gotta go to a sports bar or to a friend’s house. Of course, who cares about me. What really gets me, though, is how the network that broadcasts the package these days routinely mines MNF nostalgia. In a Seahawks v. Raiders game, for example, the network will go to archival MNF footage and talk about how MNF is now in its 38th or whatever year. Bullshit. It had 36 years on ABC. That was MNF—something that everyone could see without having to deal with some local monopoly that kills you with “tier” plans. That the current product uses the MNF appellation should draw a scolding resolution from the FCC, or someone.