NFL vs. Cable Companies Update!

November 28, 2007 at 9:52 am | Posted in football | 1 Comment
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The NFL and the cable companies have still not resolved their dispute. See my post from a few weeks ago for some brief details about why the NFL refuses to put its Sunday Ticket package on cable.

Last week, the NFL Network had a pretty crappy game on Thursday night. This week, however, the NFL Network’s Thursday game will likely be one of the best regular season games of the year, with the 10-1 Packers and 10-1 Cowboys battling it out. The second and third best teams will be fighting for home field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs.

And you know what? I actually am pretty pissed off that I won’t be able to watch the game on my standard Comcast package. It was pretty clear that the NFL was hoping one of their NFL Network games would be a great one that the majority of NFL fans, such as myself, would not be able to see and would then be angry about it.

A Modest Proposal: How to Fix the BCS

November 5, 2007 at 9:15 pm | Posted in football | 3 Comments
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This week, Boston College became the most recent No. 2 seed as well as unbeaten team to fall victim to an upset, throwing themselves into the midst of a sea of one-loss teams. The pollsters have decided that LSU is the best of them and moved them up into the 2-slot. A number of questions arise for the remainder of the season: if Kansas and Ohio State could win out, shouldn’t they play for the title? Kansas will most likely remain behind LSU and Oregon assuming they are not upset. And what about poor Hawaii, sitting at No. 16 and undefeated, with no ranked teams on its schedule? What about Arizona, whose only loss was to now No. 3 Oregon? What about UConn, this year’s surprise at 8-1 in a very tough Big East conference? And if Ohio State should lose a game, do they still deserve a shot at the title?

It comes up every year, but it is seriously time to get rid of the Bowl Championship Series, which has the top two teams play at the end of the year to determine the national champion of 1-A college football. With almost complete certainty, there will be some degree of controversy and disagreement about the national title game this year.

Here’s what the NCAA can do to fix the situation. A tournament with the following stipulations:

1) 26 teams qualify for the tournament of five rounds. Each of the eleven 1-A conference winners gets an automatic bid, and the other 15 bids are at-large, which could be selected via a committee, the AP poll, or the current BCS formula (if the NCAA is too sad to let it go). All the small conferences must be represented for the extreme value that all potential upsets have. This is to give a shot to all the Hawaiis and Boise States out there who dominate their opponents but don’t have tough schedules. Every team in every conference has a chance to play for the national title.

2) The six winners of the power conferences (Big East, Big 10, Big XII, SEC, ACC, and Pac 10) are ranked and all get byes to the second round. This increases the importance for the big schools to win their respective conferences and get a week of rest. It also ensures that great rivalries (Ohio St.-Michigan, USC-UCLA, Oklahoma-Texas for example) don’t happen in the first round when one of the teams has a good but not great season. Continue Reading A Modest Proposal: How to Fix the BCS…

NFL urges football fans to write to Congress. Whaa??

October 21, 2007 at 2:59 pm | Posted in football | 3 Comments
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In a shocking turn of events, the NFL has decided to take its fight with the cable companies all the way to Washington. Why, you ask?

If you’re a football fan, you are probably well aware that you have to purchase NFL Sunday Ticket if you want to be able to see a team’s out-of-market games every week. Sunday Ticket, of course, is only available on DirecTV. Despite various urges and offers from the cable companies, for whatever reason the NFL refused to leave its exclusive deal with the satellite dish provider. Regular old cable customers like yours truly can only get five games per week (three between Fox and CBS on Sunday, one Sunday night on NBC, and Monday Night Football on ESPN).

Then, the cable companies struck back. In protest, some have stopped carrying the NFL Network, a channel hidden away between the 300-700s for most packages. If you’ve never watched NFL Network, you’re not missing that much. It only shows a couple games per year.

The NFL’s response to all this? Take those bastards all the way to the White House! A recent statement urged fans to write to Congress so they could prevent the cable companies from stealing the NFL Network games away from them.

I’m almost offended by the NFL’s decision to do this. I could expect blatant hypocrisy from some other American sports leagues, but not the NFL. Football has easily been the highest rated sport on television recently, and the NFL has been doing a great job of maintaining that. The league has done a good job with the salary cap to ensure competitive balance, and there have been few steroid/performance enhancer scandals.

So why must they continue to fuck up their television situation so badly? Cable subscribers are demanding their product, and the NFL simply refuses to give it to them. There’s no way in hell I’m going to get DirecTV solely for more football games, but if I could get those games from ComCast, I’d definitely pay for them. I have a feeling there are plenty of other football fans out there who feel similarly.

At least the cable companies now have a bargaining chip to work with. It’s time for the evil alliance of the NFL and DirecTV to come to an end! The NFL is beating the NBA and MLB hands down in terms of how to run a professional sports league. I think we would all hate to see that come to an end.

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