NFL.com: Giants-Saints game rescheduled

[MTK]

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/8809644

(Sept. 5, 2005) -- The New Orleans Saints' game against the New York Giants in Week 2 of the NFL regular season will be played on Monday night, Sept. 19 as part of an unprecedented Monday Night Football doubleheader designed to highlight the national Hurricane Katrina relief effort, NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced.

The game had originally been scheduled to be played in New Orleans on Sept. 18. Due to the devastation in Louisiana caused by Hurricane Katrina and the magnitude of the challenges in the relief and recovery effort in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and elsewhere in the region, the NFL announced last week that the game would be played at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

The rescheduled game will kick off at 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC-TV. At 9 p.m. ET -- at the kickoff of the regularly scheduled Washington at Dallas game on ABC -- the Saints-Giants telecast will be switched to ESPN in all markets except New York, Louisiana and selected hurricane-affected areas, which will continue to see the game on ABC until its conclusion. Those ABC stations then will go to the Washington-Dallas game.

"We appreciate the leadership of ABC and ESPN in helping us turn this particular Monday night into far more than a primetime football doubleheader, making it part of the overall Gulf Coast relief effort," said Commissioner Tagliabue. "The New Orleans Saints know the importance of rising to help meet the Gulf Coast's extraordinary challenges, and we salute them, too."

There will be fundraising efforts intertwined with the telecasts of both the Saints-Giants and Redskins-Cowboys games. ABC and ESPN will devote other parts of their programming that day to promoting the evening telecasts and the relief efforts.