The Perfect Storm

Here we are Week 14. It's time for teams to separate themselves from the herd. A time of year where teams are fighting for their playoff lives. It usually makes for some compelling television. Especially in 1080p and 62 inches. All brought to you by Direct TV's NFL Sunday Ticket. Well except if you live where I do.

I live in the middle of Florida. So on any given Sunday I could watch all three teams. Well I watch every team but my local channels usually carry all of the states NFL franchises. This past Sunday however turned into the perfect storm for black outs. According to the NFL if a household is within in 150 miles of any NFL city there is the potential for your game to be blacked out. And as some of you may or may not know all games must be sold out 72 hours prior to kickoff. Now with that in mind The Jacksonville Jaguars, the NFL's version of a red headed bastard step child has some of the worst attendance this season. Well except for Cleveland and Detroit. But those teams have hit rock bottom. So it's understandable. However Jacksonville is in contention for a playoff spot and they still draw dick!

As I mentioned before I bought the NFL Sunday ticket. When you purchase the ticket you can watch pretty much every NFL game. There are blocks of channels on the Sunday Ticket package where you select the game you want to watch. Usually you can see all but two games in these blocks. The two games you can't see are on your local channels. Except if you are in an area that has black out potential. Now normally I don't give a fuck if I ever see a Jacksonville game. As far as I'm concerned Jacksonville is not in the league, state, the United Sates or for that matter in the fucking world. But this particular Sunday I had a vested interest in those assholes. My team the Miami Dolphins were playing them. And playoff implications were on the line. Needless to say it was a big game. Well the perfect storm was building over the ocean.

So Miami was at Jacksonville. 1 PM kickoff. And cross state the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (NFC) were hosting the New York Jets (AFC) at 1PM. The only interest I had in that game was the Jets hopefully losing. Fat chance! The Suckaneers were back to their old ways and were hungry to take another loss in the ass. If you didn't know all AFC games are broadcast on CBS. All NFC games are broadcast on FOX. If an AFC team is playing at an NFC team CBS has the broadcast rights. If an NFC team like the Bucs were playing at an AFC team like the Jets in New York the game would have been televised on FOX. And since this is the perfect storm the game I wanted to watch was washed away to sea!

Prior to the 1995 expansion Orlando (where I live) would show all Miami Dolphins games. There was and for the most part still is a huge base of Dolphins fans here in Orlando. Along comes Jacksonville. My perfect viewing set up has been forever altered when this abortion of a franchise came to town. Any fan of the Fish must now buy a dish to put up with these fuckers. Our local CBS affiliate is obligated by the NFL to show ALL Jacksonville Jaguars road and home games. For the most part Jacksonville's home games are blacked out because nobody has given a shit about them since 1999. Now we are 150 miles away from this shithole of a town. A 2 hour drive! But the NFL considers Orlando a secondary television market. This means Jacksonville has such a small tv market that they need help form Orlando to populate its fan base. And unfortunately we have to see all their road games. And sometimes those road games conflict with Dolphin games. So no matter how good or important of a game the Dolphins may have if they are on at the same time as a Jaguar game that's on the road the Dolphins will be bumped. Normally with the NFL Sunday ticket this is not a problem. I would watch it on one of the Sunday ticket channels. But on this particular Sunday there was a wild card in the mix.

I knew the game wouldn't be a sell out because most of Jacksonville doesn't even know they have a team. So thanks to the Dolphins fans that went on the road this was the largest turn out for these sorry sacks of shit this season. But it wasn't enough for a sellout. So when they don't show Jags home games we are able to see the Dolphin game. Well stupid me forgot Tampa has a franchise too. And they just happen to be playing an AFC team. So that means they will bump the Dolphins because Orlando is also a secondary market for Tampa Bay. The storm has made landfall.

You would think with all the money the NFL bleeds from us fans we should be able to see every game no matter what. Not on this perfect storm of a Sunday. And not with these retarded viewing policies. At 1PM everything went black. And unfortunately it wasn't alcohol induced. This was the iron fist of the league and their ridiculous viewing policy. I did get to see the game. It was on a 15 inch computer screen. With the Sunday ticket you can also watch any NFL game over the internet. For some reason blackouts do not apply to the internet. So I got that going for me. But I have news for you NFL. Nobody has and will EVER give a fuck about the Jacksonville Jaguars.