Sometimes, I really wonder about football fans in the New England area.  Yeah, I’m calling you out.  Are you real football fans?  I have to question it, specifically starting out with the individuals that run the local television stations.  But hey, now that I have everyone’s attention anyway…

 

I get it that your team was entering Sunday’s showdown with the Pittsburgh Steelers with an unblemished record.  I get it that you are gunning for a perfect season.  I get it that you have interest in watching your beloved team play.  I GET IT.

 

But shouldn’t it be OK to miss perhaps the opening kickoff and first few minutes of the game to see the completion of another?  Specifically one that has playoff implications and is about to go into overtime?

 

Case in point, yesterday’s game between the Tennessee Titans and San Diego Chargers.  Let me transport you to the waning moments of the game.  The Chargers were flat all game, with injuries being sustained to key players such as Philip Rivers, Antonio Gates, and Shawne Merriman.  Gates and Rivers fought through the pain and kept playing.  As a team, San Diego kept fighting, eventually clawing their way back, to the point where it was 17-10 in the final minutes, with the Chargers driving down the field for a game-tying score.  The once raucous Tennessee crowd was becoming uneasy, quieting from deafening cheers to borderline murmurs.  You could almost hear each fan squirming around in their seats.  With the game clock further ticking towards zero, Rivers lobbed a pass to the corner of the end zone, where star tight end Antonio Gates waited to try and win a jump ball situation.  As Gates reached up into the sky and snagged the ball, his feet came down near the sideline.  In slow motion, I watched in anticipation, as a fan of the game, and one who loves last second heroics.  The official slowly crept up from the side, and appeared to be raising his hands towards the sky to signal a touchdown when…

 

“… 0% down, come by and pick out your favorite model today…”

 

No, that wasn’t an advertisement geared at getting the attention of Tom Brady.  It was a car commercial.

 

I was now watching a local car commercial highlighting some cheesy jingle and an end of the season sale.  I kid you not.

 

The first thought that popped into my head was… “No, they didn’t… they couldn’t have.”

 

Giving the local executives the benefit of the doubt, I thought maybe it was a glitch with the TV programming, and the game was cut to commercial on accident, or just prematurely. 

 

They didn’t… they couldn’t have.

 

THEY DID.

 

New England pulled a “Heidi”.

 

Heidi, the lovable Swiss girl, also the focal point of a children’s movie that so rudely interrupted a tight matchup between the Jets and Raiders four decades ago next year.  That game was another matchup of two of the better teams in the league during that time.

 

The commercials finally ended, yet the battle between the Chargers and Titans was gone and off my television airwaves for good.  Instead, the pre-game for the Steelers and Patriots match replaced it faster than you can say “Spygate”.  I was officially thrust from the climax of one game with playoff implications, and into a pre-game chat filled with pointless banter.

 

Is there a legal contract here that something like this must happen?  Or is it that New England is so self-centered that no other game matters?  Contractual legality is the only thing I can come up with besides the fact that the head of the TV station is more of a “homer” than a football fan.  Either way you slice it, I see it as serving up a plate of “just plain ridiculous”.

 

Say what you want about it, but my message to the New England media is that you’re an absolute joke.  There, I said it.  What are you going to do about it, cut my cable line?!  You simply can’t block out the final minutes of an OT thriller (with playoff implications) to present the pre-game for the local team’s matchup.  That’s against “Football Viewing Code” if you ask me.

 

This further tells me that there could be a major event in our world today, good, bad, or tragic, and the local news stations would not dare report it because the Patriots or Red Sox were on TV.  I wouldn’t be shocked if it were only presented to me in the form of a ticker at the bottom of the screen.

 

And that, my friends, is my rant for today.  New England pulled a “Heidi” on me yesterday.  I wonder what they will do next.  My guess is something new happens by the final week of the season, when the locals do whatever it takes to get that Week 17 matchup against the Giants on local TV.  Remember, it’s on the NFL Network.  Attention New England: Since your beloved Patriots will be 15-0 at that point, why don’t you just put it on every station, much like the press a Presidential address gets.  You should put pre-game shows on during the 1 and 4 o’clock time frames too.  And yes, you can cut my sarcasm with a knife.

 

Who knows what will go on with the TV broadcast in upcoming weeks.  Stay tuned… literally.  With all my frustration, maybe I should just read a book.