This is something I honestly didn’t think we’d be seeing again. After more than half a decade, the Monday Night Football opener this season will be introduced by a new rendition of Hank Williams Jr. doing his classic crowd favorite, Are You Ready For Some Football. He was yanked by the network after what they viewed as some rather unfortunate comments (not made during an NFL broadcast) about former President Barack Obama and, er… Hitler. The break-up was rather bitter, which is why I didn’t expect to see Hank back, but Obama is gone from office and it looks like the legend is back in fashion. (Associated Press)

Hank Williams Jr. is bringing his rowdy friends back to “Monday Night Football” six years after ESPN dropped the country singer for his comments about President Barack Obama.

ESPN says a new version of Williams’ longtime “MNF” theme and its “Are you ready for some football?” catchphrase will debut before the first regular-season Monday night game — a Sept. 11 matchup between the New Orleans Saints and Minnesota Vikings.

The network says in a statement that it’s bringing back what it calls “most iconic music video in sports television history” because fans missed it.

There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of commentary coming from the singer, the league or the network, so perhaps enough time has passed and enough water has gone under the bridge that everyone is ready to forgive, forget and move on.

I have to say I’m pretty enthusiastic about the prospect. Right from the start of his run that was always the perfect song to kick off football night in America and they did so many variations of it, many customized for the individual teams playing that night, that it never really got old. The network has tried to replace Hank with some other singers with new tunes, and plenty of them had more than enough talent, but it was never really the same.

Welcome back, champ. We missed you. Here’s one of the early renditions where the military got in on the action in case you’ve forgotten. Now if we can just get the Jets to actually win a Monday night game with this as the intro…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8LLKO0-PAE

Yeah, baby.