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National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

games played on ''

ESPN Sunday Night Football ''ESPN Sunday Night Football'' is the ESPN cable network's weekly television broadcasts of Sunday evening National Football League (NFL) games. The first ESPN Sunday night broadcast occurred on November 8, 1987, while the last one aired on January ...

''. In

1987 File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, ...

, the NFL began regularly scheduling games for Sunday nights to be aired on ESPN during the second half of the season. The league expanded these games to the entire season in

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...

, though the first half of the season was televised on

TNT Trinitrotoluene (), more commonly known as TNT, more specifically 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene, and by its preferred IUPAC name 2-methyl-1,3,5-trinitrobenzene, is a chemical compound with the formula C6H2(NO2)3CH3. TNT is occasionally used as a reagen ...

, while ESPN continued to carry the second half. In

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...

, ESPN took over the entire season's slate of games. The network also aired occasional Thursday and Saturday night games when they were scheduled (some of these games were either to avoid conflicts with the

World Series The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winner of the World ...

, or because Sunday was Christmas Eve).

1980s

1987

1988

The December 18 game between the

San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...

and Los Angeles Rams featured the Rams clinching the final NFC wild card, eliminating the New York Giants and

New Orleans Saints The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans. The Saints compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. Since 1975, the te ...

from playoff contention. Giants quarterback

Phil Simms Phillip Martin Simms (born November 3, 1955) is an American former football quarterback who spent his entire 15-year professional career playing for the New York Giants of the National Football League (NFL). He is currently a television sport ...

accused the 49ers of losing intentionally to put an end to the Giants' season.

1989

The November 5 game between the

Dallas Cowboys The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divi ...

and

Washington Redskins The Washington Commanders are a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area. The Commanders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) N ...

would be the only win for the Cowboys during the 1989 season. The December 23 game was played on that day in particular because the Sunday that weekend was Christmas Eve, which the NFL avoids playing on for night games. The same thing happened in 1995 and 2000.

1990s

1990

1991

1992

1993

The January 2 game between the

Houston Oilers The Houston Oilers were a professional American football team that played in Houston from its founding in 1960 to 1996 before relocating to Memphis, and later Nashville, Tennessee becoming the Tennessee Titans. The Oilers began play in 1960 a ...

and New York Jets is best remembered for an incident near halftime when Oilers defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan punched offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride.

1994

1995

1996

1997

The November 23 game between the New York Giants and

ended in a rare 7-7 tie which was the first and only ESPN Sunday Night Football tie in series history.

1998

1999

2000s

2000

2001

2002

2003

The December 14 game between the New York Giants and

is remembered for an incident where, after scoring a touchdown, Saints wide receiver Joe Horn grabbed a cell phone hidden under the goalpost padding and pretended to make a phone call. resulting in a 15-yard

unsportsmanlike conduct Unsportsmanlike conduct (also called untrustworthy behaviour or ungentlemanly fraudulent or bad sportsmanship or poor sportsmanship or anti fair-play) is a foul or offense in many sports that violates the sport's generally accepted rules of sport ...

penalty and Horn being fined $30,000 by the NFL.