The NFL went to prime time 50 years ago on Monday night, Sept. 21, 1970. It was so long ago that it made perfect sense for the league to have the first prime-time game played in Cleveland.

The Browns were a well respected, successful organization, and they could be counted on to put 83,000 fans into Municipal Stadium.

Scheduling the Jets was a no-brainer. New York had the wildly popular Joe Namath, who was just a season removed from his guaranteed win over the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.

Believe it or not, putting an NFL game on at 9 p.m. Eastern time was considered a risky proposition. Baseball still probably was America’s favorite sport, and it wouldn’t be until the following October that a World Series game was played in prime time.

The Pirates beat the Orioles, 4-3, at Three Rivers Stadium to even the series at two games apiece Oct. 13, 1971.

It’s hard to imagine MLB and the TV networks waiting 32 years from the first nationally televised game in 1939 before making the jump to prime time.

So 50 years ago Monday night, it was a big deal. Not only was it the first NFL night game on national TV, it was the first game with three men in the booth. And one of them was Howard Cosell, who never played football.

Keith Jackson did the play-by-play and former Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith shared the analyst role with Cosell. Most former players would have had no patience for sharing that job with a guy who “never played the game,” but picking Meredith, who didn’t take himself or much else too seriously, turned out to be a perfect match.

The fact that showing highlights shot by NFL films at halftime was considered a brilliant idea says more about the ineptitude of CBS and NBC producers, who had been showing high school bands at halftime since the dawn of television, than it says about ABC’s creativity.

It was Cosell who made “Monday Night Football” special.

As much as the football purists hated the idea of a non-jock in the booth doing anything other than play-by-play, without him, “Monday Night Football” would have been just an NFL game played at night. Which is what it is now.

And in the 50 years since Cosell made his debut, every other third person in every TV booth for every sport has been superfluous.

And, speaking of anniversaries, the Steelers played their first game at Three Rivers Stadium 50 years ago Sunday.

You could say it was the debut of what is known around Western Pennsylvania as the Steelers of the ‘70s.

You would have to be pretty old to remember how bad the Steelers were. They won their first game in 1969 and then lost 13 games in a row. They had won three of their last 24 games going back to 1968 and had two winning seasons in the ‘60s.

The worst team in American professional sports.

That 1-13 season got them the first overall pick in the 1970 draft, Terry Bradshaw.

His debut didn’t have anybody talking about a future dynasty. The Steelers lost to the Houston Oilers, 19-7. Bradshaw competed 4 of 16 passes for 70 yards with one interception.

And the Steelers had lost 25 of their last 28 regular season games.

They lost their first three games in 1970. The kid who was going to save the franchise had five interceptions and still hadn’t thrown a touchdown pass.

Pittsburgh was a baseball town. The Pirates won three division championships and a World Series in their first three years at Three Rivers Stadium.

Nobody could have predicted, nine years later, it would be Cosell who called Pittsburgh the City of Champions.

Bradshaw has done OK for himself. He’s still on TV.

And in 1970, I had planned to predict that, in 50 years, he would debut on national TV in something called a reality show.

“The Bradshaw Bunch” premiered on E! last week.

In prime time.

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