‘The Simpsons’ Will Have an In-Universe Explanation for Monday’s NFL Game

Giving cartoon-loving nerds a reason to watch a professional football game for the first and only time in their lives, the upcoming gridiron battle between the Dallas Cowboys and Cincinnati Bengals will be fully Simpson-ized — meaning that an alternate “Funday Football” stream will recreate the events of the real-life game, but as a Simpsons cartoon. 

Or, more accurately, a Simpsons Nintendo GameCube game from like 20 years ago.

The cartoon take on the matchup will find Bart coaching the Bengals, and Homer leading the Cowboys, as well as several other famous Springfieldians both on the field and in the stands. Simpsons showrunner Matt Selman recently guested on The Main Event podcast, and as reported by The New York Times, he spilled some other interesting details about the upcoming broadcast.

Selman explained that the Simpsons team has prepared gags for ESPN’s creative producers Michael (Spike) Szykowny and David (Sparky) Sparrgove. But the pair won’t be hosting a show for ESPN, instead they’ll be operating as though they work for Springfield’s local radio station KBBL 102.5 FM. “It’s almost like they’re DJs, and we’ve written a thousand little short physical comedy bits and visuals that they can pop in during the game,” Selman explained, although it remains to be seen whether or not any elephants will be given away during the game.

Selman also suggested that Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones may be hosting Mr. Burns in the owners’ box, which serves as a nice reminder that Mr. Burns is far from the worst billionaire. 

Interestingly, Selman revealed that there will be an in-universe explanation for why this event is happening at all. Instead of just plopping the Simpsons characters into an NFL game, it’s all tethered to a story in which “Homer eats too many hot dogs and falls into a dream where he is coaching the Cowboys on Monday Night Football against Bart’s Bengals.”

This kind of makes sense considering that, as we’ve mentioned before, running the Cowboys was one of Homer’s lifelong dreams. Now it’s going to be his literal dream, and somehow it will be caused by consuming large quantities of processed meat.

Selman also reasoned that the Bart/Homer competition should make for an interesting game. “It has that Homer vs. Bart, father vs. son, strangling appeal that is so part of the 35-year-old show,” he noted. 

So while the game itself may end up being super boring, at least the Simpsons material should be entertaining. Perhaps they should try this approach with other less-than-exciting sporting matchups. Wouldn’t more people watch curling if the players were replaced with the Belcher family from Bob’s Burgers? ESPN could add digital versions of the Animaniacs characters to their darts matches. And the Kentucky Derby broadcast would be vastly improved if NBC worked out a deal with Netflix for the rights to BoJack Horseman.