If so, it is, as a friend of mine says, mind boggling.

It's hard to believe that come next season when the leaves start to turn and the afternoons grow crisp we won't be able to sit back with a beer or two and some chips and watch the Eagles, Green Bay or even the Forty-Niners in the comfort of our own living rooms.

There will, of course, still be Sunday morning and afternoon football on various networks, but not the hoary old Monday night with its attendant hype, commentary and occasionally a good game. Just because it's Monday Night Football is no guarantee a game will be good, but there is something about the tradition ...

Men could take over the house while the women went shopping. It was possible to yell at the TV set unimpeded. Now the last bastion of "maledom" has fallen.

It's hard to believe but there are people alive today who have never known what it is like to be without Monday Night Football. It has lasted that long. As I said, it's mind boggling.

The broadcast was the brainchild of the late Roone Arledge, who went on to gain fame as ABC's news director, before he got retired by a palace coup of some kind. When it started, a lot of viewers thought it wouldn't last. After all, there were at least two other games aired on Sunday. There couldn't possibly be that much interest in professional football.

Little did the doubters know. The broadcast was wildly successful. It took on a life of its own. In time it even spawned a biography, a book, filled with takes mostly about the broadcasters, not the games.

Because it was the broadcasters that helped sell the program as much as it was the sport. Dandy Don Meredith and Dan Deardorff were the pros, the guys who really knew something about the game.

Don had been a quarterback, after all, and Dan knew even more about the game than Don.

Then there was Babbling Frank Gifford, who never seemed to stop talking and never really said much. He started out as the guy who described the game and ended up as a "color" commentator.

But the real star of Monday Night was the late Howard Cosell, who may not have known much about football (or boxing) but made you believe he did. Good Old Howard was never at a loss for words.

He put them together in odd combinations that sometimes made sense. He argued with his fellow broadcasters (he was trained as a lawyer) and he misbehaved, but still garnered the affections of his viewers.

During one Eagles game he disappeared after half time. Someone had spiked his martini flask and he retired to his hotel to recover, only to decide it was time to go home. So he took a late train back to New York.

It took awhile for the rest of the crew to find out what had happened to him.

Somehow that only added to his legend.

Unfortunately for Howard, he made the mistake of describing a black player as a "little monkey" during one broadcast. He probably didn't mean any harm or maybe it was too many martinis again. Whatever it was, the hue and cry that followed eventually led to his being dropped from the broadcast.

After Cosell disappeared for good, things were never quite the same. ABC tried various combinations, including what purported to be a comic (he could never find much funny about football), but none of them worked as well as when Cosell was the loudmouthed king of the broadcast.

The last pairing of announcers, Al Michaels and John Madden, is competent and professional, but they're just not very colorful. They've made Monday Night seem ordinary. Or maybe it's just become ordinary, and we have become used to that. Or maybe it is just time.

Or what may be even more startling: Monday Night Football has become no longer a male bastion. There are almost as many women football fans these days as there are men. They don't go shopping any more on Monday nights, they sit down with the beer and chips just like the men.

Whatever the reason, it's time to say "good night, Howard, good night, Don and Dan, good night, Frank and Al and John."

Good night Monday Night.