« Today's sports page | Main | R.I. native A.J. Smith signs 5-year, $11 million contract extension with Chargers »

December 31, 2007

Greed Is Good (but not for Pats fans)

Greed is good -- if you're the NFL, and the networks that televise the league's games.
But not if you're a fan of the New England Patriots.
In what clearly was a matter of dollars and cents, rather than common sense, the NFL -- as expected -- scheduled the Pats' AFC semi-final playoff game in Foxboro for Saturday night, Jan. 12. Which, from a financial standpoint, makes sense, because the undefeated Patriots are the league's biggest TV attraction.
New England's game Saturday night against the Giants at the Meadowlands got huge ratings. An average of 34.5 millions viewers were tuned in to see if the Pats could become only the second team in NFL history to go unbeaten in the regular season, making the telecast the most-watched, regular-season, NFL game since the Cowboys hosted the Chiefs on Thanksgiving Day, 1995.
So it's no surprise that the league wanted to, once again, put the Patriots on in prime time.
From a competitive standpoint, however -- given that the games are going to be played in mid-January -- wouldn't it have made more sense to have the Patriots play Sunday afternoon at 1, when it's possible the sun might be shining, rather than schedule the Colts, who play indoors in the RCA Dome, for that time?
Green Bay, where it's likely to be even colder than New England, has the Saturday afternoon at 4:30 time slot for its NFC semi-final game, and the Cowboys will play Sunday afternoon at 4:30 in Big D.

Posted by Jim Donaldson  at 2:15 PM | Permalink