Monday Night Football may never be the same...
Hank Jr.'s "Are You Ready For Some Football?!" intro to Monday night's NFL game is...well...legendary. For as long as I can remember Junior has introduced the Monday Night Football game, but tonight that has stopped. ESPN decided that, because Hank Jr. made remarks of a political nature on Fox's "Fox and Friends", that his intro would no longer run.
Now, ESPN has a rule: No announcer will go on television to talk about politics, one way or another. And that's a fine rule, nobody wants to watch their football game and have to deal with that person jamming his or her's politics down their throat. But, Hank isn't an announcer; he's just a musician who does the intro to MNF...does that really count?
Apparently it does. I sit here watching MNF (I don't know why, a Manning-less Colts vs. the Bucs is a pretty sorry game no matter how it goes) and the exclusion of the classic theme song was definitly sorely missed. Certainly this decision is exclusively up to ESPN, no question about that. Is it within their rights to exclude Hank? Sure. But I still think that it's a hypocritical one.
After all, how many times have people who have been decidedly liberal sang the National Anthem? I know the Dixie Chicks have, and the Black Eyed Pea's have played half time shows, and those are just the first two that pop into my head! Granted, Junior's words about Obama were pretty harsh. He used a "Hitler analogy", and that NEVER goes over well, even if one is making a really great point.
And I mean, really, who DIDN'T KNOW that Hank Junior was conservative?
Anybody?
That's what I thought. It's not a secret, it never has been. I think that this decision has more to do with WHAT he said (regarding the Hitler analogies) and less about the fact that he was talking politics. If that was their case, ok, but that isn't the reasoning that they gave. They tried to lump Hank into the same category as the announcers, and that just doesn't sit well with me. (Also, as a side note, Hank Junior said in that same interview that he will probably be running for Senate, as a Republican.)
I think that, though it is within the rights of that particular broadcasting group to make whatever decisions that they want regarding theme songs or whatever, in the long run it will kick them in the butt. I know I wasn't the only person in America that was missing the theme song, and I know that Hank Junior himself is an immensely popular artist (in my own opinion not as good as his father, but that's another article itself) and his fans are livid about this.
I hope that whoever made that decision over at ESPN changes their mind, because Monday night just won't be the same without Bocephus.
