I enjoyed the NFL Network last year when it was included in my general Comcast subscription, particularly the 10-minute highlights of each game you could get on demand. But now they will only give it to you if you get the "sports package," and I don't feel like paying $10/month for a bunch of fishing and tennis channels. I am going to subscribe today and cancel tomorrow, but Comcast will assess a $1.99 charge for a change of service when I pick it up and when I drop it. Better than dropping money at a bar, but still frustrating.

However, I am glad Arlen Specter feels my pain:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3162011

of where and when we get to watch the teams we love is infuriating.  I have DirectTV for example, and they suck.  Their equipment is cheap and only warrantied for 3 months.  After that, you have to buy new stuff, which usually makes them demand a new contract.  Not to mention, you have to lease the equipment, you don't actually own it.  

Secondly, if you want FoxSports Pittsburgh, you have to buy the entire sports package.  How much sense does that make?  Why in the love of all that is good and holy would I want FoxSports West Coast, or FoxSports Atlanta?  That is just absurd.  Plain and simple, directtv has a monopoly and I hope that when the contract comes up in two years, the NFL does something different.  I have read that the cable companies are making a big push towards getting a share of that package.  Lets hope that that is the case.  The last I read, there are something like 1.5 million directtv subscribers who, let's face it, most of them subscribe in order to get the football package.  I know that is the ONLY reason I do it, because I don't want to spend my sunday in a bar, with smoke and a million different games on watching the steelers on a 25" screen fifteen feet in the air.  There are how many hundreds of millions of cable subscribers?  It would make much more sense and money to make it available to cable subscribers for a much smaller fee.

The sad thing is that while the NFL, cable companies and satellite companies all duke it out to make the most money, the folks who suffer are the fans.  Typical sports in America.

In the meantime, you guys should check out this site,

http://www.slingmedia.com/

The sling box is a box that you hook up to someomes cable and internet, and it lets you watch their cable from a remote distance, thru your computer.  The biggest catch is that you have to watch what that person is watching, but in the case of my brother, who lives in NY, he hooked one up at our dad's house in Pitt, and every sunday, he turns it on and watches the game.  So if you have a relative in the Pitt area, it something that you should look into.  Its pretty sweet.