Here's our weekly look at the colorful continental collage of NFL broadcasts, courtesy of the fine shut-ins at
the506.com.
It’s a sad state of affairs when the Oakland-Kansas City game gets the widest distribution of any CBS game at 1 p.m. It’s an even sadder state of affairs when this once great AFL/AFC bloodbath no longer generates excitement beyond the local markets, and even that’s a stretch. It’s the saddest state of affairs when you have to struggle through a game being called by Ian Eagle and Solomon Wilcots,
the 1976 Buccaneers of broadcast teams.
Elsewhere, the Northeast and Southeast get Buffalo-Jacksonville, a game with potential repercussions of the AFC playoff race. The rest of the eastern half of the country is split between the potential Houston-Cleveland barnburner and the Tennessee-Cincinnati snoozer. Remember when the Bengals were fun to watch? Sure you do. It was for those two quarters or so back in 2005.
The Eyeball Network offers just two games at this hour and the great, vast groaning interior of the continent will get Denver-Chicago, with CBS’s No. 2 team of Greg Gumble and Dan Dierdorf. (Phil Simms and Jim Nantz apparently have the day off after calling Turkey Day’s Jets-Cowboys game.) Baltimore-San Diego is being sent to the West Coast, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.
On a weekend marked by a feast of over-consumption, slim pickin’s (not to be confused with
Slim Pickens) is the operative phrase of the day for Fox which sends its No. 2 team to the Meadowlands for the Vikings-Giants contest, which gets the widest distribution of any Fox broadcast Sunday.
The rest of the underfed football nation is left to fight over the denuded carcass of New Orleans-Carolina, Washington-Tampa Bay, Seattle-St. Louis and San Francisco-Arizona.
(As is the case with CBS’s Simms-Nantz, Fox’s No. 1 crew of Joe Buck-Troy Aikman gets the day off after its Turkey Day call of Green Bay-Detroit.)
