Posted by Sabrina B. @gametimegirl
The Super Bowl champion New York Giants will host the Dallas Cowboys at MetLife Stadium on Sept. 5 to kick off the 2012 regular season, the NFL announced Tuesday.
The game will be played at 8:30 p.m. ET and televised by NBC.
The regular season has started on a Thursday since 2002, but the league moved this year’s opener up a day to avoid a conflict with President Barack Obama’s planned speech at the Democratic National Convention.
According to the league, it hasn’t played a game on a Wednesday since Sept. 22, 1948, when the Rams faced the Lions.
It is the ninth straight season in which the defending Super Bowl champion will host the NFL Kickoff game.
The Giants would not have been able to reach the Super Bowl if not for two critical victories over the Cowboys in the span of one month last season.
New York won in Dallas, 37-34, after Jason Pierre-Paul blocked a potential overtime-forcing field goal on Dec. 11 and then capped a sweep of the Cowboys with a 31-14 victory in the regular-season finale on Jan. 1 with the NFC East division title and playoff berth at stake.
The telecast of the Jan. 1 victory over Dallas averaged 27.6 million viewers, the most ever for a Sunday night game. It was the most-watched regular-season primetime game in 15 years.
It will be the first time the Giants closed one season and opened the next one in the same venue against the same opponent since 1994-95. Back then, it was also the Cowboys, at Giants Stadium.
The Giants have won five of their last six meetings against the Cowboys. This will be the second time the Giants have played in the NFL Kickoff game. They opened their Super Bowl title defense in 2008 by beating Washington, 16-7, at home.
WRITTEN BY Information from ESPNNewYork.com’s Ohm Youngmisuk and The Associated Press contributed to this report & FULL STORY HERE
