NFL fans face blackout on historic night

America at Large:If a tree falls in the forest but no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Even though events of the past weekend conspired to rob it of any lingering play-off significance, next Saturday night's football game between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants remains fraught with historical significance. It could turn out to be the most important game hardly anyone saw.

The Patriots are on the verge of an NFL-record 16th victory and the league's first unbeaten regular-season record in 35 years, but unless NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is bludgeoned into an 11th-hour capitulation by the threat of a congressional investigation, the regular-season finale will take place in a veritable television vacuum.

Approximately 113 million American households have televisions, but the NFL Network - the league's privately endowed, in-house broadcast arm which began televising a modified slate of games only last year - reaches only 43 million of them.

Of those, 31 million are able to access the NFL Network via satellite dishes. By extrapolation, this suggests that of a potential viewership of 82 million, 70 million subscribers couldn't watch the NFL Network at any price, either because they don't have cable access or because their cable-system operators have thus far refused to knuckle in to the NFL's exorbitant fee structure.

Nor does watching the game live and in person appear to be a viable option for most fans. The 80,000-capacity Giants Stadium has been sold out for months, and a representative of the online ticket broker StubHub told me on Christmas night that Pats-Giants tickets are commanding upwards of $1,000 apiece - and that's for the worst seats in the house. If a man really wanted see it that badly, it would actually be cheaper to fly to Dublin for the weekend and watch it on Sky Sports 3 at one o'clock in the morning.

When the NFL owners established the NFL Network several years ago it was viewed as a welcome diversion likely to be viewed only by the hard-core football fan. And since the league made it available at a reasonable 20 cents per subscriber, most cable systems played along - although many offered it at an extra cost as part of a premium sports channel package.

That changed dramatically beginning with the 2006 season, when the league negotiated its latest series of television deals. Between them, CBS, Fox and ESPN agreed to pay the NFL $3.7 billion a year for TV rights, but the league retained broadcast rights to eight Thursday and Saturday night games that would be available only on the NFL Network.

The user fee abruptly jumped from 20 cents a head to 70 cents. Most of the nation's cable operators balked in the face of what appeared to be thinly veiled usury, and most of them are still balking.

The cable moguls who have loudly complained that the NFL's strong-arm tactics are those of an illegally constituted monopoly probably have a point, but, knowing these gentlemen as well as we do, neither is it far-fetched to suggest that the collective recalcitrance of Cablevision, Time-Warner and Charter, all among the nation's largest cable systems, may well represent collusion on their part, which, if provable, would also constitute a violation of the antitrust statutes.

In a seemingly grandiose gesture on December 20th, the NFL offered to allow Time-Warner to distribute the NFL Network beginning with Saturday's Patriots-Giants game, albeit with the proviso that an arbitrator would subsequently determine the price. The cable system rejected the deal, meaning that as of this morning less than half the country will be able to watch the game.

Oddly, a loophole in the NFL's television regulations will allow regular broadcast channels in the two competing cities, Boston and New York, to carry the game, but literally millions of viewers in both markets (Connecticut in the case of New England, New Jersey in New York's) will remain disenfranchised.

The Patriots have rolled over 15 opponents, and have long since clinched the AFC's top-seeded position, a first-round bye and home-field advantage throughout the play-offs. Beyond the prospect of becoming the first NFL team to finish a regular season 16-0, quarterback Tom Brady needs only one touchdown pass to match (and two to surpass) Peyton Manning's 2004 record of 49. Wide receiver Randy Moss, who enters the game with 21, also has a chance to break Jerry Rice's NFL-record 22 TD catches in a season.

The Giants, despite several late-season missteps, came from behind to defeat Buffalo last Sunday to secure a play-off spot. Their position as the fifth seed in the NFC cannot be affected by Saturday night's game.

Beyond the game's potential impact on the record books, then, you have to wonder how enthusiastically either team is going to be trying.

The guess here is that both will approach it more or less the way they might a pre-season exhibition. Brady, Moss & Co will play long enough to have a shot at the records, but, especially if they can put themselves a couple of touchdowns ahead, not long enough to risk an injury that might sideline a key performer during the run to the Super Bowl.

And the Giants, a two-touchdown underdog, seem even less likely to take major risks.

Still, with interest running this high it was only a matter of time before the politicians insinuated themselves into the argument, and a few days ago Massachusetts Senator John Kerry dispatched a letter to Goodell in language likely to get the commissioner's attention: "Under the unfortunate circumstance that this matter remains unresolved, leaving 60 per cent of households across the country - including thousands in Massachusetts - without access to Saturday's game, I will ask the Senate commerce committee to hold hearings on how the emergence of premium sports channels are impacting the consumer".

And remember, John Kerry isn't even running for office this year.