Despite NBC banning sexually explicit ad content from the Super Bowl broadcast, Comcast customers in parts of Tuscon were exposed to about 30 seconds of a pornographic film which interrupted Comcast’s Super Bowl coverage on Sunday. According to The Huffington Post, Comcast suspects the work of hackers. The company is paying each of its affected customers a $10 refund. Blog . . .
I’ve made no secret of my Pittsburgh Steelers fandom — the most recent example is here — and so yes, Sunday was a happy day in our house. The problem is that my productivity suffers afterwards because there’s so much post-game stuff to monitor.
Not many people have a lot of money to throw around these days, so how is the recession affecting ad spending on the super-expensive Super Bowl? Even after NBC lowered its ad prices, reports the Associated Press, FedEx and General Motors pulled their TV commercials, and Playboy isn’t having its annual Super Bowl party. A 30-second Super Bowl commercial can . . .
After the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York, a lot of people wrote or called to ask if my family and I were O.K. Some of these people were casual acquaintances at best but, for many of them, I was the only person they knew who lived in New York. Their concern was extremely moving even if, at first, a . . .
With the Super Bowl coming up in less than two weeks — and yes, thanks, my team made it — it’s worth considering what sort of end-zone demonstrations will be allowed and which will not. Here’s Mike Pereira, the N.F.L.’s outgoing head of officials, with an explanation from earlier this year: If you don’t feel like watching the video, here’s . . .
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The 15 highest-rated television shows in the local market in 2008 were Steelers games, according to N.F.L. and Nielsen Media Research. The only reason there weren’t 16 games is because the September 14 game at Cleveland was not rated because of Hurricane Ike. Once again, the Steelers led the league with the highest television ratings in . . .
In recent years, the federal government has taken various actions to make it harder to bet on sports over the internet. That’s lucky for me, because when I used to bet on football, one of the key pieces of information I used was whether or not a team was a home underdog. For whatever reason, bettors don’t like to bet . . .
Remember when the Michigan Wolverines kicked off their football season last year with a loss to Appalachian State University? Some people called it the biggest upset in college football history. Well, as Mike Huguenin notes at Rivals.com, it looks like the big-time schools are being a lot more careful this year in picking their supposedly patsy opponents. Appalachian, meanwhile, is . . .
I have blogged now and again about my undergraduate alma mater, Appalachian State University, especially its accomplishments as a Division I-AA football champ. I also accepted a dubious-achievement award on its behalf for creating the “best” college-recruitment video ever — see No. 8 on the Yahoo! link. But never did I dream that the Mountaineers would play the Michigan Wolverines; . . .
A lot of you asked really good questions of Mark Cuban, which he will now pick through and answer. As it turns out, he’s in the news today for the very topic that several of you raised: his plans to start a new football league to compete with the NFL. Here are a couple of relevant passages: “It’s a pretty . . .