Bills-Bengals ‘Monday Night Football’ Game to Start at 8:30 p.m. ET
The NFL will do its part to avoid conflict with the Rose Bowl on Monday evening.
The Bills and the Bengals will meet on Monday Night Football this week in a clash between AFC titans that will have various implications on playoff seeding. That same day, Penn State and Utah will square off in the Rose Bowl, leading to a rather unique scheduling quandary for the NFL and the NCAA.
Luckily for fans of both the college and the professional games, there seems to be a solution in place.
ESPN, which will broadcast Penn State-Utah on Monday while ABC carries Bills-Bengals, announced that the game will kick off 15 minutes later than its usual 8:15 p.m ET start in an attempt to accommodate the ending of the the Rose Bowl. The bowl game is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. ET, while Monday Night Football will now kick off at 8:30.
It’s unclear if the 15-minute delay will be enough time for the Rose Bowl to wrap up, but the decision to push back the NFL game comes after a scheduling debacle on New Year’s Eve. The Peach Bowl national semifinal between Georgia and Ohio State finished simultaneous to the ball drop in Times Square, leaving many viewers stuck choosing just one moment to see live.
On Monday, ESPN will try to avoid a similar situation. The Rose Bowl will kick off at 5 ET on ESPN, and Bills-Bengals will air on ABC starting at 8:30 ET.