Hey, babe, relive the Dennis Miller NFL era with this Miller Night Football trailer

Dennis Miller’s infamous tenure on ABC’s Monday Night Football was indeed short—the former Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” anchor and comedian filled Boomer Esiason’s loafers for only two seasons, from 2000 to 2001—and not everyone found it amusing. With the benefit of hindsight, HBO is hoping grumpy football fans will finally appreciate the funny side of one of MNF‘s shortest announcing tenures. The network announced on Wednesday that it’s reteamed with its former Dennis Miller Live partner for Miller Night Football, a documentary directed by Jeff Cameron (HBO’s Hard Knocks) that “examines one of the most ambitious experiments in sports broadcasting history.” Here’s the logline: 

MILLER NIGHT FOOTBALL chronicles comedian Dennis Miller’s unlikely arrival in the “Monday Night Football” (MNF) broadcast booth in 2000, alongside veteran sportscaster Al Michaels and former NFL quarterback Dan Fouts. Intended to reinvigorate the iconic television franchise and attract a broader audience, Miller’s addition, and his distinctly cerebral brand of humor, was met with both intrigue and skepticism across sports and television.

Miller’s droll, rapid-fire cadence splashed literate esoterica all over Monday Night Football, a stark shift in tone that was more than ABC had bargained for after letting former co-announcer Esiason go in 2000. Amid fan outcry, a bewildered Al Michaels, and a series of fan-friendly annotations from Encyclopedia Britannica, Miller was eventually replaced by John Madden in 2001. “As soon as Madden left Fox, I pretty much knew I was going to be whacked,” Miller told The New York Times in 2004. “‘I had alienated half the community, and probably half of them liked me. Which is pretty much my batting average. I began to see maybe a decade ago that my career was never going to be in complete approval. I wasn’t endearing.”

You can watch the trailer below.

Miller Night Football kicks off on HBO and HBO Max September 29 at 9:00 pm ET/PT, cha-cha.