Why I Am Ignoring USA-Canada Men's Ice Hockey...As Well As The Rest of the Winter Olympics

Today brings about the biggest international hockey game involving the USA in three decades.  And it will NOT be broadcast in the good old USA on free TV.  That's right.  The National Broadcasting Company, worldwide leaders in ladies' hygene products called douchebags, point out the the Olympics are dominated in the rating by women 18-49, especially in prime time, with "plausably live" broadcasts since 1992 that are even more "plausably live" on the West Coast and have ignored the triple dubs and ESPN for spoilers, is telecasting the game on MSNBC, which BTW was not forced upon them by Uncle Keith.  And what's NBC showing?  The most gayest event in the history of sports, ice dancing.  That's right, motherfucking ice dancing!

NHL officials, especially Gary Bettman, the league's commissioner, are furious, and are now officially considering pulling out of the next Winter Olympiad four years hence in Sofia, Russia.  Okay, NBC fucked up both Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien (soon coming to the Fox Broadcasting Company channel near you this September), get bashed on a regular basis by Billo the Clown, and now THIS?  Douchebags - wait, check that - douchenozzles indeed.  And J. Pierpont Comcast is taking over.

If I was Gary Bettman, I tell the head of the International Ice Hockey Federation to stick it four years from now.  Then I tell Comcast to go away when the NHL deals with NBC and Versus expire.  Finally, I open bidding for the OTA and cable contracts combined for ESPN on ABC ABC and ESPN, Fox and FX, and CBS and Spike TV (or any combo of these) hope one of them gets the next pair of Olympics following London.

When It Comes to the Flexing of Sunday Night Games, The NFL Does Not Care For Playoff Implications...

Hope you enjoyed Brett Favre's loss to Carolina Sunday (12/20), and you like next week's (12/27) Cowboys blowout of the Deadskins.

When the 2009 Schedule was placed onto the world wide everything all the way back in April, thirteen days notice is given to change the NBC Sunday Night Football game from Week 11 through 16.  So how many games were flexed out by Roger Goodell's lieutenants of television?

One.  That was when the Patriots-Dolphins game was swapped out for Favre-Cardinals way back on December 6th.  And now, with the push to Miami Gardens underway for Super Bowl XLIV, the NFL and their Sunday TV partners - Fox, CBS and NBC - ought to learn from the mistakes of not swapping out Minnesota-Carolina for a sexier, playoff-inducing game like Bengals-Chargers, or not showing a cringe worthy nation the apocalypse called Dallas at Washington and rather show an unbeaten Colts team against a hanging-by-a-thread-as-far-as-the-postseason-goes Jets team.

Nope, Goodell cares about ratings.  We have been lied to again by the National Football League, and wether we like it or not, we will have to live with this for another four years.  Take a look at this week's Fox schedule...please.  Seattle at Green Bay and Carolina at New York Giants are the only games with playoff implications, while the rest of the slate - Tampa Bay at New Orleans, St. Louis at Arizona and the Gordon Forbes Memorial Negative-Star Pillow Fight of the Week Detroit at San Francisco - have about as many playoff backstories as Amy Winehouse visiting Alcoholics Anonymous.

The reason the "flex" scheduling was introduced was to prop up NBC's Sunday Night game late in the season.  It was also inducing to both CBS and Fox to help prop up their ratings for early contests.  When it was announced that Cowboys-Redskins would stay where it was, there were screams of disbelief at both 30 Rock in New York and at Fox Sports' offices in LaLaLand, and for different reasons. NBC was shocked that they were keeping that game, and Fox was as angry as a midget wrestler on a Red Bull bender that their schedule was that weak.  Meanwhile at Black Rock, CBS was ROTFLTMFAsO that they were now placing Broncos-Eagles in the 4:15 PM ET slot.

As they used to say "It's all about the Benjamins"...and we're the ones getting screwed royally.

MLB's TV Partners Prohibits You From Seeing The Last Two World Series Champions Play Each Other...Unless You Have Cash Monies, Homie

There are assholes, and then there are TV programmers. Both seem to have their heads up their arrears at the same time. Take for example, the folks at TBS, ESPN, FOX and MLB Network.

Please.

On the weekend of June 12th through June 14th, the last two teams that won the World Series - the Boston Red Sox (2007) and the Philadelphia Phillies (2008) - will be playing a three-game series at Citizens Bank Park. Guess how many games will be telvised on one of those networks.

None. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Bubkus.

That's right. None of them. So, what games will be on national television that weekend? Let's check the schedules, kids.

• FOX June 13 - New York Mets at New York Yankees or St. Louis Cardinals at Cleveland Indians, 4 PM ET.
• MLB Network June 13 - San Diego Padres at Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Orange County California USA Western Hemisphere Third Rock From the Sun Milky Way Galaxy Crab Nebula, 9 PM ET.
• TBS June 14 - New York Mets at New York Yankees, 1 PM ET (Headline News in New York City area).
• ESPN June 14 - St. Louis Cardinals at Cleveland Indians, 8 PM ET.

I can possibly understand the Mets-Yankees thing, but the last place Cleveland Fucking Indians and the last place San Diego Motherfucking Padres? Can someone have these prickheads take a damn cocksucking drug test to see what they were eating/drinking/smoking when they made these decisions? The die was cast a week earlier when ESPN decided to put the Phillies-Dodgers NLCS rematch for that week's Sunday Night Baseball telecast on June 7th. As far as I'm concrened, the Cardinals-Indians game was better off on KSDK in St. Louis and WKYC in Cleveland, thus in turn, pissing off those at NBC.

Sadly, the greedy motherfucking bastards at Major League Baseball will make these games available because as Ted DiBiase the elder says "Everybody's got a price...Everybody's gonna pay...'Cause [MLB]...Always gets [their] way." Those games (except in New England and the Valley of the Delaware) are readily available via their Extra Innings digital cable/DirecTV package or via the internet on MLB.tv. The sadder part? DirecTV doesn't carry Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia thanks to an obscurely antiquated FCC rule about exclusivtivity and Comcast's preferrence to use microwave/fiber optics.

So I give a great big loud FUCK YOU to TimeWarner, NewsCorpse and Disney as well as MLB's in house TV operations for this gigantic pile of bullshit. You made your beds, now the fans outside New England and Philadelphia expect you to lay there, you cocksucking assholes.