King Kaufman's Sports Daily
NFL moves more games from free TV to cable. Can poor people still be sports fans?
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Jan. 30, 2006 | After months of often bitter negotiations that pitted the left pocket against the right, the NFL reached a deal with itself Saturday, awarding its own NFL Network a package of eight late-season night games, starting with a prime-time game that will create a Thanksgiving Day triple-header.
Various cable entities had reportedly been bidding on the package over the past few months, especially Comcast, which observers believed was hoping to launch a cable network to rival ESPN. Others reported to be in the running at one point or another had included USA and TNT.
Instead, it's NFL, the 2-year-old network you have to go to your friend's house to see. The network is available in about 40 million homes, which sounds like a lot but isn't.
It's a safe bet cable systems that now treat NFL Network as a third-tier channel on a par with the Canine Biography Network and VH1 Classic May Through September of 1986 (of "I want my VH1CM-S86-TV" fame) will bump it up into the neighborhood where ESPN, TNT and USA live.
The deal means a return to "Thursday Night Football," a failed experiment of days gone by. The NFL is such a behemoth that even its failures are pretty successful, but I just don't think America has been clamoring for NFL games on Thursday nights, and I don't think lifestyles are going to be altered so we can watch them.
One of the best things the NFL has going is the rhythm of its week.
There's the full slate of games on Sunday, including one in prime time, then the Monday night game, and then five off days, days spent first reviewing and chewing over the previous week's action, then, at midweek, Wednesday or Thursday, turning the attention to the next weekend.
The anticipation builds and builds as the workweek comes to a close. Matchups are examined, office pool sheets are filled out, fantasy lineups are chosen, bets are placed, smack is talked, tailgating and TV-watching plans are made. Then, finally, Sunday arrives and every game is a big event.
Thursday games throw a wrench into that rhythm. I mean for the fans. I don't care about the players having a short week to prepare. They're well-paid grown-ups and they can deal with a difficult work situation same as the rest of us.
An NFL game on a Thursday night isn't a big event. It's just another TV show. As in, "Let's see, 'The O.C.' or 'CSI'? Oh, there's a Chiefs-Chargers game on."
Next page: What does it mean to price the poor out of the sports world?