A Chronicling and Study of the 2000 Monday Night Football Scorebug.
Happy offseason, everyone!
There is a recent post in the subreddit of the "HE DID WHAT?!" highlight from a 2000 MNF game. In this highlight, the scorebug showed the abbreviation for the teams as "VIKES" and "PACK." I got curious, and did some research on how ABC approached this style of shorthand for other games that season.
Here's what I found:
Week 1: BRONCS - RAMS
Week 2: PATS - JETS
Week 3: DALLAS - WASH
Week 4: JAGS - COLTS
Week 5: HAWKS - CHIEFS
Week 6: BUCS - VIKES
Week 7: JAGS - TITANS
Week 8: FINS - JETS
Week 9: TITANS - SKINS
Week 10: VIKES - PACK
Week 11: OAK - DEN (Random return to normalcy.)
Week 12: SKINS - RAMS
Week 13: PACK - CATS
Week 14: CHIEFS - PATS
Week 15: BILLS - COLTS
Week 16: RAMS - BUCS
Week 17: DALLAS - TENN
A few notes:
*Washington is WASH in week 3, but SKINS in subsequent weeks. I reckon this is to maintain consistency where both teams in the scorebug are abbreviated using either the team city or the team name, and not a mix of both.
*Week 11 is randomly back to the traditional abbreviations for team cities, where the Broncos are DEN, even though they were BRONCS in week 1.
*Tennessee is TITANS in weeks 7 and 9, but is TENN in week 17. No TITS :(
I was going to include pictures of the scorebugs, but that was too much work. You can google the game and find them on youtube.