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Hank Williams Jr. Is Returning To Monday Night Football On ESPN

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Hank Williams Jr. is coming back to “Monday Night Football,” (MNF) six years after ESPN parted ways with the well known country music star due to comments he made about then-President Barack Obama.

Williams generated controversy when he compared Obama to Hitler during an interview on “Fox & Friends” in 2011. The singer described a golf match between former Speaker of the House John Boehner and Obama “as one of the worst political mistakes ever.” Host Gretchen Carlson asked Williams to clarify.

“Come on. That’d be like Hitler playing golf with (Israeli Prime Minister) Netanyahu,” he quipped. These comments led to him being dropped by ESPN in 2011.

Other then country music, Williams is well known for his “Monday Night Football” saying, “Are you ready for some football?” A new version of MNF opening song “All My Rowdy Friends Are Here on Monday Night,” will premier before a Sept. 11 game between the New Orleans Saints and the Minnesota Vikings.

“I never said, ‘Are you ready for some football’ on stage one time the last five or six years, but I will now,” said the singer, seated in his dressing room during a break in filming the commercial.

“I think it’s a return to our past in that it’s such an iconic song associated with football,” Stephanie Druley, senior vice president of events and studio production for ESPN, told The Tennessean “It was the original. It belongs to ‘Monday Night Football.’ It really is about returning to what fans know. It’s a Monday night party, and that’s what we’re all hoping to get back to.

I hope there will be some happy people on Monday night again,” Williams told The Tennessean. “It feels natural, fulfilling and satisfying at this point when you’ve kind of done it all. I’m feeling at home, and it’s a real good thing.”

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