AP Tony Kornheiser, in the middle between ex-jock Joe Theismann and straight man Mike Tirico, is a walking advertisement for Monday Night Football. The columnist hosts an extremely popular show on ESPN weekday afternoons called "Pardon the Interruption."

While the show's former network, ABC, took that programming hit lying down, its new home is refusing to take a knee. The ESPN ad gurus in Bristol, Conn., have come to the stunningly sensible discovery: if the NFL's work week ends Monday night, it starts on ... Tuesday morning. Or better yet, immediately after the big game.

That's when the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports starts making sure fans are more than ready for some football by the time the next Monday night rolls around. In between already pigskin-packed segments of SportsCenter and NFL Countdown, the network is airing a new series of advertisements that blatantly link each day of the week to the NFL's showcase matchup, centered around the catch-phrase "Is It Monday Yet?"

There's Tuesday's water cooler talk ("six more days until Monday night"), Wednesday's injury report ("four more days until Monday night"), Saturday's merely adquate grid of college football ("two more days until Monday night") -- they're all just part of a continuous countdown toward what's really the first day of your miserable 9-to-5 job.

But the ingenius part of ESPN's strategy goes beyond branding individual days. They've managed to push its product into the deepest recesses of the brain by attaching it to nondescript chores, like getting a glass of water or rolling into work on a Saturday -- virtual billboards where even wireless can't reach, attainable only through constant mnemonic trickery.

Few networks could orchestrate the sort of rapid-fire brainwashing necessary to implement a seven-day-a-week ad assault. ABC left Monday Night leaning on its laurels because it had a six other primetime lineups to worry about. ESPN, on the other hand, broadcasts relatively synonymous sporting events on a nightly basis that merit little-to-no advertising at all. A baseball team plays 162 games a year, an NBA team 82, and literally hundreds of college football teams take to the field every Saturday. But there are only 16 Monday Nights between September and January, and ESPN is hyping up each and every one.

Of course, we do have our limits, so ESPN needs to continually evolve its admittedly clever campaign or risk viewers asking "Is Football Season Over Yet?" That shouldn't be too tough, though, there's still plenty of everyday ennui to exploit.

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asap reporter Otis Hart is based in New York.

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