Voluptuous Thinking

Our football appetite

November 28, 2007 | Sports

So, here we are on the eve of one of the biggest professional football tilts of the season.  Apparently, one of the greatest travesties of our time is being committed simultaneously.  According to ESPN and others, barely one-third of the nation will be able to watch the Green Bay Packers play the Dallas Cowboys tomorrow night.

That’s because the game is being shown on NFL Network.  And, because of the deal it has with cable providers, the network is only shown in about 30 million households.  And for some reason, because the other 90 million households will not be able to watch the game, a near-crime has been committed.

Did I miss a poll?  Was there a sudden swelling in the Packers’ and Cowboys’ fan base?  I know the Cowboys are “America’s Team” but they’re not, you know, AMERICA’S team.    And while the Cheeseheads slice from the Eastern Seaboard to Half Moon Bay, there certainly aren’t 90 million of them clamoring for attention.  But still, because the NFL Network is showing the game exclusively (save local markets), and it’s not being handed out like free cheese, something has gone terribly wrong in pundits’ eyes.  And, well, that’s dumb and for those giving their shallow protests, so are they.

The NFL has expanded nicely from our fall-winter refuge to an all-year spectacle.  We can’t get enough of it.  We love football.  Also, we’ve transitioned from rooting for our own team to cheering on all teams.  Blame some of this on fantasy football.  Blame the rest on good marketing and merchandising.  In any case, we got our first few hits and now we’re back to our street corner vendor for more and more.  On that, Colin Cowherd made a great point today: the NFL succeeds because, paraphrasing here, it does not whore itself around every network and give every bit of itself away to everyone.  The league makes you want more of it.

To hear pundits talk about it, it’s like the NFL Network is holding a national treasure hostage.  Really?  There’s no other form of entertainment on Thursday night? And do we have some sort of caveat emptor over that telecast we did not before?  We don’t.  And the people making the most noise are the radio pundits.  So, let’s do the math: if two-thirds of their listening audience can’t see the game, then two-thirds of their audience won’t want care when the radio hosts talk about it.

In any case, this is about money; that is, the NFL wants a tidy sum for its channel and its asking a lot per subscriber to do so. (As an aside, the NFL Network was advertising HARD on ESPN Radio today.  Almost every break had a promo for the game.  Think the network wasn’t setting a psychological time bomb in listeners by doing that? “I’m calling my Congressman about the NFL Network, Dammit!”)

Chances are if you’re a big fan of those teams, you’re going to see that game tomorrow night.  If you’re not a fan, you probably won’t, unless you can get to a bar, restaurant or rec room that’s got the game running. I’ll be watching the game because I can Thursday night.  If I couldn’t, I’d probably have the ESPN Gamecast on my computer or would have just played with my daughter.

Either way, while my appetite for the NFL is large, I can consume a few snacks in between to keep the hunger down.