What happened to the Sunday Night Football theme song?

Tonight is Sunday night, but it will not be "Ohhhh Sunday night!" The first week of Sunday night football on NBC will have a new song with Carrie Underwood performing "Game On", the new anthem for the 2018 season and beyond. Honestly, we are not ready.

"Game On" is fine. He tells us that the game is open – but "Ohhhh Sunday Night" was perfect. We had something beautiful, something for us, and the broadcasting gods took it away.

The song was magic.

The greatest, most legendary songs have this incredible ability to let us shape their meaning, to see our reflection in their image and to learn a little about human nature in the process. "Ohhhh Sunday Night" took on a different meaning for us all.

• For the person waiting for this football game, it was a festive anthem.
• For the great sadists who watched football for 12 hours in a row, it was a rallying cry for one last game.
• For the tired sports journalist, it was a symbol we had almost done.

It was reliable in an amorphous world. It was our rock. It was the favorite karaoke anthem of Al Michaels.

It was our same. It was our strength. It was a warm melodic hug before the overwhelming reality of a Monday at work crushes our minds. "Ohhhh Sunday Night" was created for all of us and all of us.

Carrie Underwood deserves immense credit for giving us something so beautiful. She may have needed Jesus to get behind the wheel and may not yet know that guy's last name – but she controlled our hearts when Sunday night arrived.

I am ready to give "Game On" a chance.

I will defend myself and say that the expiration date is good. There is a reason why, when you're a kid, you think that Halloween would be amazing every day, so you realize that it would be a bloody hell when you're an adult. "Ohhhh Sunday Night" is best appreciated as a moment in time. A glorious and pristine burst on our existence radar where we felt joy, but it did not go beyond its reception. It will be forever ours, in memory.

If I have faith in anything in this world, it's that Carrie Underwood can unravel a song that will become desperately anchored in my head. Now, I must admit that the first feedback on "Game On" seems to show that its future transactions will be very weak in the meme economy, but you never know it. Maybe Al Michaels will try to sing tonight and everything will be fine in the world.