Week 12 NFL Crap on TV

With Thanksgiving on Thursday, it sort of dilutes the product for Sunday. Nobody has byes this week, but three of the best teams in the league have already played their games. This weekend would be the best weekend to have DirecTV if you do not, especially if you live in a market who has local obligations to a losing club (like Columbus, Ohio) and gets continually shafted into not seeing the good games.

CBS has the singleheader:

1:00 PM EST Starts:

Jacksonville @ New York Giants - Greg Gumbel, Dan Dierdorf
Tennessee @ Houston - Ian Eagle, Dan Fouts
Pittsburgh @ Buffalo - Kevin Harlan, Soloman Wilcots

4:00 PM EST Starts:

Miami @ Oakland - Gus Johnson, Steve Tasker
Kansas City @ Seattle - Bill Macatee, Rich Gannon

They're using Miami-Oakland as a fill-in game for an otherwise drab weekend on the eye network. It's basically an elimination game but I'm guessing since the Raiders have a national following, they are being shown to the majority of the country for the second-straight week. CBS has sent Greg Gumbel and Dan Dierdorf to nearly every Giants and Vikings game on CBS over the past few seasons and this weekend is no different with Jacksonville heading to the Meadowlands. Pittsburgh-Buffalo is being shown to wa-ay too much of the country. Seriously, this game should not be shown outside its primary markets.

Fox has the doubleheader. Here are the early games.

Green Bay @ Atlanta - Thom Brennanman, Brian Billick
Minnesota @ Washington - Dick Stockton, Charles Davis
Carolina @ Cleveland - Chris Rose, Torry Holt

God, why do the Browns have to be on Fox this weekend? And worst of all they're playing the Panthers. It's good to see the Vikings not on the nationally televised game. I think finally the media have gotten it that the Vikings and Brett Favre are not a good team and have stopped dick-riding them. Rose and Holt are 7th in the batting order. Technically Stockton and Davis are slotted ahead of Brennanman and Billick and probably when they did the schedule everybody thought the Vikings would be good but because of the dominance of the Falcons and the Packers, they probably got switched (or more affiliates decided to go with the Packers game).

Here are the late games:

Philadelphia @ Chicago - Kenny Albert, Daryl Johnston
Tampa Bay @ Baltimore - Sam Rosen, Tim Ryan
St. Louis @ Denver - Ron Pitts, John Lynch

Good to see more and more affiliates switching away from Tampa Bay-Baltimore to Philly-Chicago (I don't see Tampa-B'More being much of a contest). There is some Mickey Mouse NFL rule where the Redskins and Ravens can't play a home game on the same network, so that is why the Ravens game is on at 4:15. And just if you're wondering, Josh Freeman went to Kansas State, so that is why the Bucs game is being carried throughout Kansas.

If none of the Columbus stations switch between now and Sunday, the combined record of the teams playing on Sunday afternoon is 28-34.

And I've never understood the whole "since a player on Team X played college here, we're scheduling their game even though they play on a crappy team that has no local ties to this area." And yes, I live in a market with a football factory school, but I still don't get.