Greenberg, Golic and Young to Call Chargers-Raiders Monday Night Football Doubleheader Game on Sept. 14

Greenberg, Golic and Young to Call Chargers-Raiders Monday Night Football Doubleheader Game on Sept. 14
Mike & Mike to Co-Host SportsCenter on Mondays at 6 p.m. During NFL Season

Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, co-hosts of ESPN Radio’s popular Mike & Mike in the Morning, will team with ESPN studio analyst and Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young to call the San Diego Chargers-Oakland Raiders game as part of ESPN’s season-opening Monday Night Football doubleheader on September 14 at 10:15 p.m. ET. The game will follow the Buffalo Bills- New England Patriots telecast (7 p.m.) when ESPN’s main commentator team of Mike Tirico and analysts Jon Gruden and Ron Jaworski makes its regular season debut.

Greenberg and Golic will also expand their roles on Mondays during the NFL season as co-hosts of the 6 p.m. edition of SportsCenter. The duo will recap all of Sunday’s NFL games and other weekend sports news, and look ahead to each week’s Monday Night Football matchup, by bookending their Mondays from 6-10 a.m. on ESPN Radio (simulcast on ESPN2) and hosting the one-hour SportsCenter from the ESPN studios in Bristol, Conn., beginning Sept. 21.

The Chargers-Raiders telecast marks the third straight season Greenberg (play-by-play) and Golic (analyst) are calling the MNF doubleheader. They worked alongside Mike Ditka the last two seasons — Arizona Cardinals vs. San Francisco 49ers (2007) and Denver Broncos vs. Raiders (2008). Young, who is calling a MNF game for the first time, made a pair of guest appearances in the MNF booth during the 2006 season in addition to his weekly Monday Night Countdown studio role.

“As we kick off the 40th season of Monday Night Football, we are excited to have the familiar faces and voices of Mike and Mike back on the doubleheader game this year alongside Steve, a Hall of Famer, who will offer the kinds of insightful opinions that have made him one of our top NFL analysts all these years,” said Norby Williamson, executive vice president, production, ESPN. “We are equally pleased to create yet another new role for Mike and Mike on the 6 p.m. SportsCenter in the latest evolution of our season-long ‘game around the game’ coverage of Monday Night Football.”

Greenberg joined ESPN in September 1996 as an anchor for ESPNEWS, and today he regularly anchors SportsCenter. He and Golic were named co-hosts of Mike & Mike in the Morning on ESPN Radio on December 30, 1999. The popular program is now heard by more than 12 million people weekly, airing on more than 350 affiliates nationwide. They have also co-hosted ESPN Radio’s NFL Draft coverage and called Arena Football League games together.

Golic, a nine-year NFL veteran (1986-93) who played defensive tackle for the Houston Oilers, Philadelphia Eagles and Miami Dolphins, joined ESPN in 1995 as an NFL reporter/analyst for Sunday NFL Countdown. In addition to co-hosting Mike & Mike in the Morning, he has worked as a game and studio analyst for AFL and college games, and contributed to ESPN’s NFL Live and NFL Draft coverage. Golic served as an analyst for ESPN’s NFL preseason telecast of the Colts-Falcons game in Tokyo in 2005, and he worked as an analyst for Jacksonville Jaguars preseason games (1995-98).

Young, the San Francisco 49ers Hall of Fame quarterback, retired in 1999 as the highest-rated quarterback in NFL history. The three-time Super Bowl champion was the MVP of Super Bowl XXIX and a two-time league MVP (1992 and 1994). He remains the only quarterback in league history to win four consecutive passing titles and post six consecutive 300-yard passing games. Young has been with ESPN since 2000 as an NFL studio analyst, appearing on a variety of programs, including Sunday NFL Countdown and Monday Night Countdown, as well as annual Super Bowl and NFL Draft coverage.

Senior coordinating producer Tim Corrigan, who has overseen ESPN’s season-opening MNF doubleheader games the past three seasons, and director Mike Schwab, will oversee production of the Chargers-Raiders telecast. The matchup of longtime AFC West rivals and original American Football League franchises will be one of the Legacy Games that is part of the NFL’s celebration of the 50th anniversary season of the AFL.

ESPN’S MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL
ESPN’s Monday Night Football is the most-watched series in cable television history and the only NFL series nominated for a Sports Emmy in the Outstanding Live Sports Series category the past three years (2006-08). In three seasons on ESPN, Monday Night Football has registered seven of the top 10 all-time biggest household audiences in cable history, led by the Philadelphia Eagles-Dallas Cowboys telecast (9/15/08), which attracted cable’s largest household audience ever (an average of 12,953,000 million homes and 18,608,000 P2+). For the 2008 season, MNF averaged an 8.9 rating and 8,679,000 homes (11,962,000 P2+); the accompanying MNF “game around the game” content on ESPN.com sparked an increase of Monday traffic to the site of 51% over the previous season with an average 68.1 million page views per week.

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