Let the bad NFL programming decisions begin

I was excited to get home from church today with the knowledge that the National Football League would be on TV, and specifically the teams with the two best records from last year would be playing.

It seemed like a no-brainer that we'd watch the San Diego Chargers (14-2 last year, with the league's best running back in LaDainian Tomlinson) against the Chicago Bears (13-3 and the Super Bowl runner-up).

But no.

Instead, we got the Seattle Seahawks (9-7 in '06) against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (4-12), I guess because Portland is too weak to have its own team and Fox Sports thinks we want to watch the team from 175 miles up the interstate.

I called KPTV to complain, but their recording specifically says (in paraphrase), "If you're calling about the game that's being broadcast, we don't have any control over that. If you want to complain, call Fox Sports." Of course, the recording also says that KPTV makes requests about the games it wants and frequently gets those games, so my guess is that they request Seattle.

How incredibly pathetic and stupid. It's almost enough to get the Dish Network. Almost.