The reason we fans won’t be able to see the game is because the NFL Network, who is broadcasting the game, and several cable companies (mine is Time Warner, so I’ll use them) can’t decide how much more they want for carrying this channel. According to the NFL Network, here is what is happening:

FACT: It costs only 2 cents per subscriber a day for cable companies to offer NFL Network, yet they want to charge you up to $10 per month for the right to watch NFL Network.

FACT: Although more than 222 million Americans watched NFL football last year, the cable companies argue that NFL Network’s audience is too small to justify a spot in the basic lineup. Yet they manage to offer less popular sports channels they own, like Versus and the Golf Channel, on basic cable.

FACT: Cable has a double standard when it comes to sports channels. Channels they own, like Versus and the Golf Channel are included in the basic lineup. Independent channels like NFL Network get left out in the cold. This is unfair and anti-consumer. Consumer interest should decide what channels get carried – not inside deals among cable companies.

Here is Time Warner’s side of the argument:

Q4. How much is the NFL asking Time Warner Cable to pay for the Network?

A4. This is about price AND value. And the NFL needs to get real. The asking price for this network is not in line with the content it plans to deliver. NFLN is still evolving – its viewership is too small to even be rated. So we don’t really know how many people are watching it nationally.

We cannot get into negotiation specifics. But they are asking for a greater per-subscriber fee than today’s top rated networks. We won’t pay superstar prices for an untested rookie.

Sure, hardcore NFL fans love NFLN. But its programming is limited to only 8 games out of 238 available in the 2006 regular season and other shows targeted specifically to a limited audience. Because of the nature of its targeted programming and its price it belongs as part of a sports package where only those interested need to pay.

Well, after reading all of this, I have come to some conclusions regarding this whole situation:

• Both sides are being pig-headed in an attempt to be seen by the public as fighting to keep their cable costs down.
• Time Warner is being just as greedy as the NFL on this one. TWC wants to charge each subscriber $10 a month extra to carry an entire tier of programming just so they can watch the NFL Network, which only costs TWC $0.60 a month per subscriber to carry. The NFL wants that $0.60 per subscriber from the entire customer base, not just the the subscribers to the Sports Tier.
• Both sides seem to be a bit disingenuous when representing the other side in their ads. TWC keeps telling people that the NFL Network is a “niche” network and no one knows how many people will watch it. We all know that football passed baseball several years ago as the national pastime; many millions will watch the NFL Network during the season. However, there is a real question as to how many of those 222 million people cited by the NFL will watch the NFL Network during the off-season, when no new games will be shown.

No matter how this situation is resolved, the after-effects will be similar to the after-effects of a strike by the players. I know that I won’t forget the fact that their “negotiations” prevented me from seeing my favorite team play in the biggest game so far this season. I’ll also have to take a look at the cable bill the next time it comes in the mail and determine if I am really getting my money’s worth or not. I mean, its great to have all of those channels, but do I really need 20 different HBO, Showtime, and Starz channels? It might be a good idea to check out the satellite companies and see if my wife and I could be happy with a much lower bill and a lot less filler channels.

In the meantime, I guess I have to watch a DVD or surf the Internet tonight, instead of supporting my favorite team as they remind Bret Favre that it is time to retire.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Carlos Oliveras has a home run ball specially marked to assure authenticity.

It just doesn’t have Barry Bonds’ autograph as the slugger refused to sign the ball.

Source 

What a jerk. No wonder no one likes him; he’s classless. A true gentleman would have gladly signed the baseball and posed for pictures with the fan; it’s all a part of generating positive press for you, your team, and the league in general. As it is, he looks like a thug who doesn’t care abount anything but himself.

Bonds said no when he was asked at his news conference if he would sign the ball if a fan wanted an autograph. Moments later, when an official asked if there were any more questions, Oliveras piped up:

“Will you sign my ball?”

Bonds smirked and said nothing.

After his news conference, Bonds shook Oliveras’ hand and took a picture with him.

“I’m happy because I got a picture and he shook my hand,” he said.

There was one signature needed though. Oliveras had to sign a waiver for Bonds’ reality show.

Source

It’s no wonder that most Americans look upon football as the national pastime these days rather than baseball. I stopped watching baseball years ago when some player started complaining that he couldn’t feed his family on three or four million dollars a year, and not a single player called him out on it. I’d love to earn three or four million dollars a year for standing out in a nice grass field, wearing sunglasses, and occasionally chasing after fly balls.

Quarterback Daunte Culpepper and three other Minnesota Vikings were charged Thursday with three misdemeanors each for taking part in a bawdy boat party earlier this season on Lake Minnetonka.

Culpepper, Bryant McKinnie, Fred Smoot and Moe Williams were charged with indecent conduct, disorderly conduct and lewd or lascivious conduct, according to court papers.

Prosecutor Steve Tallen’s decision was based on findings by the Hennepin County sheriff’s office, whose investigators reviewed allegations of lewd and drunken behavior aboard a floating party Oct. 6 that involved some Vikings players.

Crew members complained that some people took off their clothes and engaged in public sex acts during the cruise, according to Stephen Doyle, an attorney representing the boat owners, Al & Alma’s Supper Club and Charter Cruises in Mound. The crew members identified 17 Vikings among about 90 people on the two boats.

Doyle had said Smoot paid for one of the cruises. Smoot responded by threatening to sue whoever “put my name in there.”

You’ll remember I blogged about this back in October when all of this happened. Since then, the team has replaced Culpepper with Brad Johnson and gone on a 6 game winning streak, partially easing the discomfort of the local fans.

Regardless of whether or not the players are charged with felonies, they ought to be suspended without pay at least for the rest of this season and part of next season as well. The new owner of the Vikings had instituted a new conduct policy after the scandal broke, and suspensions such as these would put some teeth into them.

Remember, you’re not dealing with men here, you’re dealing with boys who get paid large sums of money to play a game for the amusement of others. In order to get anything across to them, you’ll need to treat them as such.

1. San Antonio is a small TV market (around number 40). There are many other places with a higher rank that don’t have teams that the NFL would probably consider first.
2. Los Angeles (the number one TV market) is where the NFL is going to put any team which wants to relocate.
3. Owners Jerry Jones and Bob McNair will never allow the NFL to place another team in Texas because it would dilute their fan bases.

Unfortunately, recently elected Mayor Phil Hardberger has made it known that he is going to actively seek the relocation of the New Orleans Saints to San Antonio:

Laying aside all pretenses about the city’s interest in the New Orleans Saints, Mayor Phil Hardberger said Sunday he plans to pursue actively the permanent relocation of the team to San Antonio.

Hardberger said Saints owner Tom Benson has agreed to participate in discussions, likely at the end of the current season, aimed at making the team the “San Antonio Saints” before the start of the 2006 season.

“He (Benson) understands that we will sit down and talk,” Hardberger said while attending Sunday’s Saints-Atlanta Falcons game at the Alamodome. “That is his desire as well. I’m pretty comfortable in saying he wants to be here.”

First off, Hardberger isn’t winning any friends by literally kicking the citizens of New Orleans while they’re down. Publicly announcing his intention to take the Saints away from a populace which is still reeling from two hurricanes is probably one of the most classless things anyone has ever done in pursuit of a NFL franchise. I’m almost positive that Tom Benson, whatever his intentions, did not want this information to be made public at least until the season was over.

I wonder, now that Louisiana has been put on notice that their loyalty and support is no longer required, how many tickets to the Saints’ 4 games in Baton Rouge will get sold? Why should the people of Louisiana support a team that is going to leave them at a time when they need distraction the most?

Luring the Saints to San Antonio could cost millions, Hardberger said.

“To get a team you have to spend money, and many people only see that part of it,” Hardberger said. “But you have to ask what you are going to get out of it. If you are getting back $3 for every dollar you spend, so what if it takes millions?”

This is one reason why I had to hold my nose when I voted for this dolt. He has no concept of fiscal responsibility. He never asked, “What happens if we spend these millions of dollars, and then the Saints go somewhere else?” The Alamodome and San Antonio have been used as leverage before by other NFL franchises in order to get a better deal where they were at. The last team to do so was the Minnesota Vikings, whose owner at the time Red McCombs was from San Antonio. Almost the entire time he owned the Vikings, he used the possibility of moving the Vikings to San Antonio as leverage to try to negotiate a new stadium deal. He never got one, and one of the reasons he sold the team was probably because the NFL let him know in no uncertain terms that the NFL was never going to put a team in San Antonio.

Many people who have been in city government here in San Antonio have drank from the sports nuts’ NFL kool aid. They seem to swallow the whole trip hook, line, and sinker. What’s worse, once they start talking about it publicly, San Antonians start to think that it can be done. Then, the taxpayer money starts disappearing into “feasibility studies” and “cost-benefit analysis” reports. Before you know it, a million dollars or more will be gone and the citizens of San Antonio have nothing to show for it.

The NFL is never going to relocate a franchise in San Antonio. Chances are that the NFL is not going to open up for expansion either. The talent pool each year from the college draft is spread way too thin now, to add any more teams would damage the quality of the play. The people of San Antonio need to realize this and quit wasting taxpayer money which would be better spent on other needs. Also, if by some chance the Saints do end up in San Antonio, how it going to look to the rest of the country? Poor New Orleans getting looted by San Antonio and left high and dry. This isn’t the image San Antonio needs.

Minnesota Vikings players are being investigated in connection with a lake cruise that turned into a wild sex party last week on Lake Minnetonka. The party became so out of control that crew members on the two yachts were offered money for sex and feared for their safety, law enforcement authorities and an attorney for the cruise company said Tuesday.

Once again, the public is treated to a group of wannabe men who are paid astronomical sums of money to play a game who have no idea how to conduct themselves as civilized people. In return for watching this spectacle, the public is expected to allow the team to use taxpayer money to build multi-million dollar facilities which the players will play their games in, while the owners consume all of the money spent on concessions, parking, merchandising, tickets, personal seat licenses, and broadcasting rights. Am I really the only one who sees something wrong with this?

Doyle said behavior on the cruise included oral sex, masturbation and playing with sex toys.

A source with direct knowledge of the case said Tuesday that accounts of Vikings players having public sex on at least one of the boats matched with what witnesses had reported.

The source said that it appeared that the sex acts took place between consenting adults and that no felony-level crimes had been committed. The source said that it was likely that misdemeanor charges involving lewd behavior could be filed against some players within a week.

The next time you see one of these idiots on television crying his eyes out because he wants a new contract with more money as a sign of respect, remember these images. Then tell the bastard that respect is earned, not bestowed.

Prior to boarding, at least one group in a limo urinated on Cathy Hough’s lawn in Mound, according to Hough and police. She said she confronted the men. “I said, ‘Excuse me, do you mind?’ And they looked at me as if I was crazy,” Hough said Tuesday. “One of them said, “It’s only water, ma’am,’ and he continued peeing. I said no, it’s not.”

These people are classless morons. It is yet another example of what happens when you take a child and hand him millions of dollars to do with as he pleases. They have no self-control, no respect for others, and no idea why everyone despises them.

If you live in Minnesota, please vote no on a new stadium if you have a chance. Sure, the Vikings will leave, but it doesn’t really sound like that is a bad thing.

Now, because of a slick bill of goods sold by former Mayor Henry Cisneros to the local sports nuts, San Antonio is the proud owner and operator of a domed football stadium called the Alamodome. At the time that the former mayor was championing the building of this stadium, San Antonio had no professional, semi-professional, or minor league football team. In fact, the only local football teams which garner any attention at all are high school teams. So, you may ask, how did Cisneros sell the city on spending $186 million dollars on a football stadium with no football team to occupy it? Simple: Cisneros sold the city’s sports nuts on the pipe dream that the NFL would place a team here if we had a suitable stadium. Besides, he said, until we get that NFL team, the Spurs can use the Alamodome for their home games.

So, the city and VIA Metropolitan Transit (the local bus company) decided to authorize a 5 year half-cent sales tax increase to pay for the stadium, and construction lasted from 1990 to 1993. When the Alamodome opened, it was debt-free and VIA turned it over to the city. At first, everything seemed okay, as the Spurs moved over to the dome (having been removed from Hemisphere Arena by its razing) and the occasional college football game kept the populace quiet.

Fast-forward a couple of years, and the Spurs started grumbling about the “unsuitability” of the dome as a basketball arena. Also, they had won the NBA Championship, so they used this new-found clout to get a new basketball arena (the SBC Center) and promptly moved out of the Alamodome, leaving it without an anchor tenant.

So, the Saints are in town, they need a place to play their home games, and the Alamodome is just sitting there empty. City officials offer the use of the Alamodome to the Saints for their home games, and the Saints’ players are thrilled. While it isn’t their true home stadium, at least they will have a place to call home and, more importantly, won’t have to share with another team. The common sense in all of this is just amazing, which is probably why the NFL, and Paul Tagliabue, instantly killed the deal. Instead, the Saints would play their home opener at the stadium of their opponent, the New York Giants. Also, the Saints would play four of their remaining home games in Baton Rouge at LSU’s Tiger Stadium. The Saints would be allowed by the NFL to only play three of their remaining home games at the Alamodome.

The Saints’ players were not happy. basically, they are being asked to play all but three of their games this season on the road. So, why did the NFL and Paul Tagliabue insist that they not play all of their home games in San Antonio?

NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue has an opinion on the issue of San Antonio’s viability as an NFL city. Two words. “Small market.�

In an interview with the New Orleans Times-Picayune published today, Tagliabue rejected the idea that San Antonio’s support for the displaced New Orleans Saints represents a chance for the city to prove its NFL worth. He inferred San Antonio isn’t capable of providing adequate support for an NFL team.

Responding to a question specifically about San Antonio’s qualifications, Tagliabue said the NFL has no plans to move “any teams into small markets.�

“We’re going to be moving up in market size, not down or flat,� Tagliabue said.

The commissioner thinks that San Antonio is “small market” and can not support an NFL team. While I happen to agree with that assessment, the question here isn’t whether or not the New Orleans Saints are going to permanently move to San Antonio. The question is where are the Saints going to play their home games for the 2005-2006 season, and how can the NFL make it as easy as possible on them? In this sense, the commissioner obviously has no clue.

It also must be pointed out that the NFL under Tagliabue has an agenda here. The NFL badly wants to put a team in Los Angeles to tap into all of the money there.

With regard to the city’s first-day sales of 50,000 tickets for the Saints games, Tagliabue was asked: “Might this turn into an opportunity for that city to prove that they should be in the mix?�

“Ever since we approved the move of the Raiders and the Rams, I’ve been saying that our goal is to get a team back to L.A., either through expansion or whatever, and we’re not going to be moving any teams into small markets,� Tagliabue said.

“We’re going to be moving up in market size, not either down or flat. That’s our goal. So that’s been my mindset. We’ve had enough teams move from large markets to small markets. So if … any teams are relocated in the future, the objective is going to be to concentrate them — put it this way — in markets that can really support them.�

So, what should San Antonio take from all of this? Well, if it can only take one lesson away from this situation, it needs to accept the fact that the NFL is never going to put a team in San Antonio. Period. To the NFL, San Antonio isn’t any better than their rank as the 40th television market in the country. The main objective of the NFL and its owners is to make money. In order to make money, the NFL has to put teams into the biggest television markets possible in order to draw the largest audience possible. Unless San Antonio’s rank as a television market becomes much improved, the NFL isn’t even going to pay lip service to the possibility of putting a team here.

What San Antonio needs to do is relax, enjoy the three Saints games which will be played here, wish the Saints well when they leave, and then move on. The city’s sports nuts, who spend an inordinate amount of time calling the local 24-hours sports talk radio station, need to give up the pipe dream of having an NFL team of their own. Do they really think that Jerry Jones and Bob McNair (owners of the Cowboys and the Texans, respectively) are going to allow another team into Texas to cut into their fan and merchandise-revenue bases? If they do, they need to put the crack pipe down.

Bill Summee has been a police officer since 1992, but nothing prepared him for the situation he encountered Wednesday night.

Summee, now a security officer for the Reds, responded to an emergency call to Section 143 at Great American Ball Park during the seventh inning. A man had collapsed, and paramedics were working on him.

As they tried to revive the man, who did not survive the apparent heart attack, an officer handed the man’s 6-year-old grandson to Summee.

…

Summee still wanted to get Antonio away from the stands, so he took him into the Reds’ bullpen, where bullpen coach Tom Hume let him sit on the bench for the last two innings of the game.

Then Ken Griffey Jr. became aware of what was going on and took charge.

“Win or lose, he was coming in the clubhouse,” Griffey said.

As the Reds wrapped up their 8-5 victory over the Braves, Griffey went to the bullpen and got the boy.

The players included Antonio in their high-five celebration. Then they took him into the clubhouse.

“We play a game,” Griffey said later. “What he was going through doesn’t compare.

“It was important that the little guy not be by himself.”

Clubhouse manager Rick Stowe said the other players followed Griffey’s lead and rallied around the boy.

This is the type of story that encourages you about the general state of humanity. Here are these baseball players, who make millions and millions of dollars every year, and they take the time to comfort a little boy who has just lost his grandfather. Further, the player who probably is the highest paid on the team, has enough common sense to realize that they’re just playing a game, which is nothing compared to what this child was going through. Color me shocked about Ken Griffey’s unselfishness.