NFL Regional Television Coverage: Created by the Devil

Sunday was the beginning of the new NFL season and like many people I was excited to sit back and watch some interesting games. I got home from church at about 11:50, ten minutes to kickoff. I decided to go to NFL.com and see what games to look forward to. There was a pretty good choice of games slotted for noon.

The game that I thought would be most interesting was Philadelphia and Green Bay. Brett Favre and Donovan McNabb are both great quarterbacks and that could be a nice matchup. I was also hoping to see Carolina at St. Louis. Admittedly I'm not a big fan of either team but I have Steve Smith and Torry Holt on each of my Fantasy Football teams and was hoping for them to both put up big numbers.

There were other games that had some kind of interest also. Randy Moss' debut for the Patriots could be interesting. I have relatives in Buffalo so I sort of root for Bills because of them and my entire family except for me is from Pittsburgh so I have some interest in the Steelers. There were only three games that I had no interest in. The Atlanta/Minnesota game, the Tenneseee/Jacksonville game, and the Miami/Washington game.

Finally the clock strikes noon and CBS and Fox start their choice of football games. It is then that I remember they both have regional coverage. Therefore the two games that I got to watch were Atlanta vs. Minnesota and Tennessee vs. Jacksonville. Ugh.

For those of you who don't know what regional coverage is let me explain. CBS airs games from the AFC and Fox airs games from the NFC. They are allowed to show whatever game they want so they usually have regional coverage meaning that anybody who lives in the Texas region will see one of the Texas games. If you live in the California region then your game will be Oakland, San Diego or San Francisco. Since I live in the Southeast my regional teams are the Tennessee Titans and Atlanta Falcons, two teams that are so boring that Michael Vick couldn't make the Falcons interesting and Vince Young can't make the Titans interesting.