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Cowboys, Packers Meet for NFC Supremacy

by David Kindervater on November 29th, 2007

Blogging the National Football League, Blogging the NFL

Remember this picture? I do. I was a little over one month old when it was taken. If you look at the bottom left you’ll see Green Bay Packers quarterback Bart Starr (#15) doing a face plant across the goal line to score the winning touchdown against the Dallas Cowboys. It brought the Packers their third consecutive NFL championship. Many remember it as the “Ice Bowl” because of the frigid temperatures that day in Wisconsin.

These two teams will meet again this evening in much milder conditions (game time temp is expected to be between 50-55 degrees), but with both squads entering the game at 10-1 to battle for NFC supremacy, it brings back fond memories of great Packer and Cowboy teams. This is a classic matchup and a perfect prime time event as the NFL Network continues their Thursday/Saturday programming. One problem I see, however, is that not everyone gets NFL Network. I know when I was vacationing in the Outer Banks of North Carolina over Thanksgiving, I had to tune-in to NFL.com for a companion live broadcast of the Colts/Falcons game because the local cable company (Charter) didn’t carry NFL Network. It was pretty good, but a poor substitute by comparison. I wasn’t alone. The NFL is still in a fight with some cable companies and Jerry Jones (Cowboys owner and head of the NFL Network committee) is going so far as to recommend that people switch to satellite television to watch the NFL Network. In a pre-Thanksgiving conference call, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said:

“We are working as hard as we can to get the NFL Network on all other cable systems on terms that don’t involve charging our fans extra. None of the current distributors of NFL Network have raised their rates due to adding our channel to their system. Right now some big cable operators want to make the NFL Network a pay extra or Pay‑Per‑View option. That is not good for our fans or fair to our fans, and we are not agreeing to that as such.”

Back home in the comfort of my living room, I enjoy DirecTV complete with the NFL Network on channel 212. But there will be a lot of football fans quite disappointed they can’t watch what should be a classic late-season battle between two of the NFL’s best teams because of this dispute. The NFL is right in their stand, though. They are looking out for their fans as they should be. The big cable companies (Time Warner, Comcast, etc.) want to get the rights to the NFL Network, then place it in a higher tier where they can premium price fans for the right to view the content. Not cool. I don’t pay more for NFL Network on DirecTV — never have, never will.

At any rate, a couple interesting factoids about tonight’s game: 1.) Dallas leads the series 14-12 all-time and 2.) Brett Favre has never won a game at Texas Stadium — he’s 0-8 and the Packers have not won there since 1989.

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POSTED IN: Dallas Cowboys, Green Bay Packers