Thoughts on the NFL

Things I was reminded of Sunday after 7 months without the NFL...

• Fox is still targeting that key demographic of 4-7 year old males with their retarded animated robot graphics.
• Apparently, every NFL fan has erectile dysfunction. I'm not a Bible-beater or anything, but someone (hellooooo, FCC?) needs to create a law to keep these freaking commercials off network TV in the middle of the afternoon. I can't wait until Zoe is old enough to watch the Bengals get killed with me and turns to ask me what a "prolonged erection" is during a commercial break.
• The experts' picks for sleepers always end up sucking. Cardinals and Vikings? Yep, still suck.
• Good teams always cycle, i.e. you can't stay dominant forever (just ask the 49ers). Hope you enjoyed your stay at the top, Colts and Patriots fans. It's a long fall down...
• Network executives can't say 'No' to retired football players. It doesn't matter that Michael Irvin, Keyshawn Johnson, and Emmitt Smith can't speak English, they used to be stars! Put them on TV! Fox now has 5 people in the studio. If this keeps up, they'll either need to switch the pre-game show camera work to pan-and-scan or letterbox the damn thing. Nothing more enjoyable that 5 idiots simultaneously trying to speak gibberish.
• Television scheduling is still incomprehensible. I was scheduled to get the Bengals/Ravens tilt for the 1pm game on CBS since Baltimore is a secondary market for DC, but nooooooo, that game gets bumped so we can revel in the glory of Brett Favre. Does Brett Favre own a 51% stake in the NFL? If I have to watch him every weekend, I'm going to be spending a lot of Sunday afternoons in the yard.
• Still no Sunday Ticket for cable. What a freaking joke. I don't know how much DirecTV is paying the NFL for the exclusivity, but it must be a shit-load of cash. By opening this up to cable at $200 a pop, they'd probably get at least 1 million more subscribers, which works out to $200m/season while, at the same time, expanding their product. I just don't get the logic behind this decision. It's available on cable in every country except the US!
• The Bengals still suck.

I always get really excited about the season, then am reminded how much it all annoys me. Maybe it would be better if I had SundayTicket and didn't have to watch the Redskins and Ravens every Sunday (with New York, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia as secondary markets). I feel like the NFL, with a level playing field of mediocrity and over-concern regarding image, is about to begin a downward slide.