End of an Era

I love the time of year when Sundays are essentially wasted days, spent on the couch watching the NFL, drinking beer and eating junk food. It's very different this year, and from my perspective most of the changes are positive. I don't have the expensive Sunday Ticket package, though I do get NFL Network, so from my perspective, the extra nationally televised games are a very good thing. I'm going to get to see a few extra Giants games this year that I wouldn't get to see otherwise, and other than when Joe Buck does play by play for games from a remote location, his addition to the Fox pregame show doesn't bother me as much as it does Mike over at the Outhouse Times-Picayune.

But something was missing from my football experience this Sunday. After the Jags-Cowboys game ended, I flipped to ESPN, as I have every football Sunday for almost two thirds of my life, to catch the highlights of the eight or so games I didn't get on NFL Primetime. But it was nowhere to be found...and as I found out yesterday when I went searching for its next airing on good old Google, it's gone for good. Now I understand how some of the younger set felt when they heard the Crocodile Hunter had died. I didn't watch it last night, and probably won't watch much of it in the future--it doesn't matter what they call it; if it's not on Sunday nights and not hosted by Chris Berman, it ain't Prime Time.