Talking NFL

Call tonight’s match-up Super Bowl 42.625.  The 10-1 Packers will take their Brett Favre magic and  tenacious D into Texas Stadium to take on the 10-1 Cowboys led by the Tony Romo & T.O. show.  It should be an epic game, with the winner claiming the inside track to the NFC Championship.

Too bad most of the country won’t be able to see it.

What’s most amazing (and nauseating) about this ongoing tiff between the NFL Network and major cable providers like Time Warner Cable and Comcast is the fact that this stalemate has been going on for over a year now.  The Britney Spears/K-Fed custody battle is being run more efficiently than this clusterf–k.

I shant go into the sordid details here; plenty of other sites have gone there all ready.  Rather, let’s take a look at the bottom line, specifically the annual revenue for the major companies involved:

National Football League: $7 Billion (2006)
Time Warner Cable:  $9.498 Billion (2005)
Comcast: $24.97 Billion (2007)

Source:  Wikipedia

So these guys bring in over $40 billion a year combined, yet somehow can’t work out this arrangement.  Hard to pick a side on this debate when each contestant looks like this:

So here’s a suggestion from Talking NFL:  Rather than contact your cable provider or the NFL Network directly to complain (which is almost guaranteed to have zero effect), contact the FCC.  Bloomberg has published a must read article on the recent attempts by the FCC to increase their oversight of cable providers.  They are trying to determine whether or not more than 70 percent of U.S. households have access to at least 36 cable channels, and if more than 70 percent of those homes subscribe to a service:

If the FCC determines the industry has met the so-called 70/70 threshold, it will gain authority to impose more rules on cable operators such as Comcast under a 1984 law that sets a broad mandate for more diversity and competition.

This would mean more competition, less power for cable providers to increase prices by 100% over the last 10 years, and less money in these fat fatties’ wallets.

So here’s the contact info for the FCC - feel free to reach out and touch them:

Phone:  1-888-225-5322
Email:  fccinfo@fcc.gov

As for tonight’s game; the big loser is the cable customer.  The big winner?  The local sports bar.  I’ll be at El Guapo’s myself.  Good luck to the rest of you in finding your own watering hole with a big HD flat screen!

Update: If you don’t feel like going to an overcrowded bar, you can check out the NFL.com Live “Companion Broadcast”. While it won’t be the same as watching a regular game on TV, they will provide periodic “look-ins” and in-game highlights. Which is certainly better than nothing if you’re stuck at home taking care of the kids. (Hat tip: Awful Announcing)

NFL Network, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, squeal like a pig