NFL FOOTBALL IS BACK, JACK!
Fans have been waiting patiently for six months for football to return, and the long awaited return of gridiron action is officially upon us. This offseason has been filled with speculation, trades, huge contracts, predictions, fantasy football, and (of course) betting on absurd futures, but now, we’re only a few days away from NFL fans getting to see their teams in action out on the football field.
It’s a beautiful thing knowing that we’ve got football every single week (and every Sunday) all the way until a Super Bowl champion is crowned in February:
As of right now, the Los Angeles Rams are the favorites to win the Super Bowl. They’ve got the best odds to bring home a Lombardi, with the Buffalo Bills, the Baltimore Ravens and the Seattle Seahawks (who won last year) following closely behind. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see how the season plays out… and for my Minnesota Vikings to break my heart once more.
We all love watching the game (duh), and one of the most underrated parts of the game experience: each game provider’s football theme music. Now let me go ahead and put out a disclaimer that you won’t see Carrie Underwood’s “Waiting All Day For Sunday Night” or Hank William’s Jr’s “Are You Ready For Some Football?” on this power ranking.
Though I greatly appreciate both of those songs, and they add (or used to add) much to the football watching experience, this list is strictly the instrumental musical productions that each network that carries football has…for some unexplained, inexplicable reason. I don’t ask why all the networks have their own NFL theme music… I just appreciate that they do.
I also have to mention that Netflix has even entered into the sphere of NFL broadcasting. They inked a three-year deal to be the exclusive home of the NFL’s Christmas Day games (which I’m not a fan of… I’ve got too much to do on Christmas). But for now… I’m just going to focus on the main networks that are covering the National Football League. So let’s get to all of the NFL theme songs and where they fall in my rankings, shall we?
Honorable Mention: This Pedal Steel Cover of the NFL on FOX Theme
Mike Drassler, who calls himself a “Nashville Picker,” rolled out this version of an NFL theme last year, and I (and many others) quickly fell in love with it. NFL on FOX on the pedal steel guitar? That’s beautiful. That’s magnificent. That’s something that I had no idea I needed. And I love that he referred to it as “our nation’s other National Anthem.” You best believe this country loves it some football, and if I were FOX… I’d be sliding this theme song in as an alternate. It’s that good.
6. Amazon Prime Video Thursday Night Football
Prime Video’s football theme is respectable, but it just doesn’t carry the same musical enthusiasm as the others do. Amazon is one of the most recent entrants into the NFL provider space (if you don’t count Peacock since it’s a part of NBC, or Netflix), so being late to the game and joining the ranks with so many other well-established theme songs had Jeff Bezos doomed from the start. There’s certainly room for improvement with this one.
5. NFL RedZone
Gotta throw this one in there for the die-hard NFL RedZone fans out there. Even though RedZone is effectively not the same as it used to be since they added commercials into the whip-around coverage, it’s still a beautiful product.
All you have to do is sit on your couch, while RedZone host Scott Hanson enthusiastically shouts things like “octobox” and “witching hour” while bouncing around from game to game, and touchdown to touchdown. The countdown clock they feature is a beauty as well, and their theme song is worthy of being on the list.
4. NFL on CBS
You might be scrolling through and be surprised to see that this one comes in at number five. It is solid, don’t get me wrong, but hopefully you’ll agree with my placement as we continue on through the list. The CBS theme song packs a punch, and is definitely the most “rock themed” of the entire list. There’s really nothing wrong with it at all, but it just fails to top any of the remaining three in the rankings.
3. NBC’s Sunday Night Football Theme
When you’ve been waiting all day for Sunday night, this song absolutely brings the heat. The build up is everything, and NBC’s NFL theme music is a beautiful orchestra that welcomes in fans for the last game of football’s oh-so-beautiful Sunday slate (and select games that air exclusively on Peacock, much to my chagrin). Pair it with the Cris Collinsworth slide-in (hopefully they bring that back at some point) and you’ve literally got yourself a ball game.
2. ESPN’s Monday Night Football Theme
ESPN’s Monday Night Football song and NBC’s Sunday Night theme are both so good, which made it incredibly hard to pit them against one another. However, ESPN’s NFL theme gets the edge in my power ranking because of the climax of the song where it goes “dun, dun, dun, dun, DUN.” For some reason, it just means more. Big time football fans know exactly what I’m talking about.
1. NFL on FOX
The number two spot firmly belongs to this all-time anthem, which is FOX’s “turn the volume all the way up” NFL theme. I don’t know about you, but this song makes me want to run through a brick wall. Hearing it right as the FOX broadcast begins (usually overlaid on top of futuristic FOX football robots running and spiking footballs on a Tron-esque football field) pumps you up enough to make you finally go for that 5-team parlay.
