Faith Hill Sunday Night Football

In recent years ESPN's Monday Night Football has been eclipsed by NBC’s Sunday Night Football by such a wide margin, few fans even debate the issue.

But there is still another question for football fanatics to ponder: Which night of the week has the hotter theme song?

The idea of a pop singer kicking off a football telecast started with “Are You Ready for Some Football?,” Hank Williams Jr.’s catchy remake of his country hit “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight.” The party anthem, coupled with random celebrity cameos, from Gwyneth Paltrow to Lil’ Kim to Nicolette Sheridan, have been pumping up Monday Night Football fans since 1989.

But NBC set out to change the score in 2006. The network’s execs figured that they were going to need to “get the party started” with a killer theme song for their own version of Sunday Night Football (which previously aired on ESPN). So, the Peacock branched out and chose singer Pink. Sure, adding a hot chick with a great voice into the mix wasn’t exactly the most original showbiz idea, but for primetime NFL telecasts, it was indeed a first.

Thus was born Pink’s feisty pre-game song, “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night,” which debuted on Sept. 7, 2006 — a remake of Joan Jett’s 1988 quintessential angry woman anthem, “I Hate Myself For Loving You.”

The pink-haired rocker gave the broadcast’s graphics-heavy intro that one-two punch NBC execs were looking for, complete with air kicks, fist pumps and shots of Pink clad in more sexy dresses than you see on Oscar night. Choosing a strong, powerful woman to compete with Hank Williams Jr.’s theme song offered universal appeal. It got men excited for obvious reasons, and, perhaps not so obviously, it fired up female fans to see one of their own belting out a kick-ass football song.

The following year, Pink had to bow out reportedly because of scheduling conflicts. So, the network replaced her with Faith Hill, maybe because the Mississippi-raised singer could rival Hank Williams Jr.’s country-music cred. Still, Hill seemed to be an odd choice to continue the bad-ass intro that Pink had reinvented; I mean what was she going to do, sing a remake of “This Kiss” to get us pumped up for the game? (Um yeah, that’s the song she performed on the NFL Kick-Off game in 2007. Didn’t exactly get viewers pumped for the big game.)

But NBC must have figured out their Faith faux-pas with “This Kiss,” because they then had her belt out her own version of “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night.” In spite of some skeptical fans who had come to love Pink’s Sunday Night Football theme song, Hill’s version more than held its own.

It didn’t hurt that Hill is actually a die-hard fan of football and the Tennessee Titans. “Particularly men find it hard to believe that women can be big fans of football, but I love it,” she told the Associated Press. “Dinner has to be planned around the game at our house, homework has to be finished, it’s an all-gather-around-the-television time.” (link)

This year, Hill is returning to continue the Sunday Night pre-game musical tradition. She has also been featured in a new Sunday Night Football commercial where she invites some players over to “cook” for the big game.

So which night has the better theme song? My vote goes for the hot women of Sunday Night Football. Sure, Hank Williams Jr. has rocked his pre-game theme for so long, the once-edgy tune now is practically as old-school-NFL as Vince Lombardi. But, for me, there’s nothing better than a powerful woman belting out, “I’ve been waiting all day for Sunday night,” and actually meaning it as much as I do.