Why NBC Shouldn't Be Trusted With the NFL

Recently, the NFL's television broadcasts were completely upheaved and switched around. NBC somehow managed to steal Sunday Night Football away from ESPN (read: lots of money). Now, NBC is not really known for its sports prowess. I mean, they broadcast the Olympics every two years for a couple weeks, and Notre Dame football every fall, so that qualifies them to broadcast world-renowned football all over the earth for 16 weeks every fall, right? And Bob Costas, bless him, he's a likeable guy, and he tries. I do have to give them credit for securing John Madden and Al Michaels for the commentary, because we all know they're the best. But this past Sunday night was it. I don't know how much more I can take.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I am not the biggest football fan in the world. I began watching professional football when Husband and I started dating. I know my football, don't get me wrong. Heck, I played lots of yardball as a kid, and went to football games in Highschool. I have been to a Dallas Cowboys/Washington Redskins Thanksgiving Day game, and have even played on the field at Texas Stadium. So I'm qualified to comment here, although I will concede there are others that are infinitely more qualified that myself to have an opinion here.

First of all, you must know that NBC is doing this whole "Green Week" thing in which they use their news and TV show venues to try to convince the world they care about the environment and that we should all be in crisis mode over global warming. So Bob C and his buddy begin the game intro in the dark. Literally. They sat in a darkened stuio with a "Green Week" ticker scrolling in the background and proclaimed that by broadcasting the show in the dark, they were saving enough energy to blah, blah, blah. Really?

My first thought was, "You've got to be freaking kidding me." But guess what, they weren't. They did the whole stuido broadcast part of the game sitting in the dark. Oh, there were lights on - background lights that just made the foreground look even more dark - I would imagine that was done for dramatic effect. For crying out loud - this show is done once a week. Can they not have the lights on in the studio for their once weekly broadcast?

Next, the entire halftime part of the show was dedicated not to recaps of the day's games, score updates, or random football facts. It was spent sitting in the dark talking about and interviewing the Today Show's anchors who have spread themselves over the globe in order to broadcast the week's shows about global warming and the environment. Matt got the short end of the stick, and was somewhere in the artic circle, freezing his balding head off. Al was sweating in some "extremely sensitive" area of the rainforest, and Ann was chattering her teeth in Antartica. Again, are you kidding me? Forget the whole issue of the tree-hugging celebrities who tell us we should walk to work, then use their private jets to get across the country for a five-minute interview. These people, in order to tell us how bad off the environment is, are further screwing it up by not only sending three people to environmentally sensitive areas, they're hauling camera crews, lights, and all the other crap needed to broadcast a live television show. Really? The environment is so bad off that in order to show us how bad off it is, we have to destroy it even more?

All of that aside, how many of the millions of football fans cared about their environemntal crap? Probably about three. And none of them were in this house. I can just imagine all the regular people like us, sitting there wondering if NBC had gone off their rocker - environmental crap during a football game? And what about the half-drunk guys who were watching the game? I'll bet there was some yelling going on - probably more than when the game was on. But most of all, I can guarantee you there was some channel flipping happening. Because all you had to do was switch over to ESPN or The NFL Channel. So guess what, NBC. Nobody cares about your crappy commentary on the environment or anything else. Just broadcast the game and shut up before you mess up football.