Bowl Games Could Help NFL Network

When the NFL Network won its bids on a pair of college bowl games this year, it realized it was getting more than just a foothold on another level of football. It also would find itself fighting on another tier with the cable companies that are refusing to carry the three-year-old channel on their systems.

When the pairings for those two bowl games were announced this week, the league, already challenging the cable providers to a fight over NFL games, discovered just how much additional leverage it had. The Texas Bowl on Dec. 28 will pit Rutgers against Kansas State, and the next day's Insight Bowl will feature Texas Tech against Minnesota. All are located in or near markets affected by three of the biggest cable holdouts: Time Warner, Cablevision and Charter Communications.

Nowhere is the level of consternation higher than in New Jersey, where Rutgers is in the midst of its best season in three decades. Roughly 1.7 million of the state's 2.5 million cable subscribers viewers have either Cablevision, Time Warner or a non-digital level of Comcast service that does not allow them to get the NFL Network.

"Going to the game is the way to guarantee seeing it live," said Rutgers deputy athletic director Kevin MacConnell. "We are working on it with the Big East. Obviously, considering we are in the biggest media market in the country and our TV ratings have been great, to have it over the air would be a win-win for everybody."

This week, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and NFL Network President Steve Bornstein asking the league to put the Rutgers-Kansas State game on a free television station in the New York-New Jersey market.

"It's unacceptable that a majority of New Jerseyans may not be able to watch their state university play in a bowl game," Lautenberg said in a statement issued yesterday afternoon. "This is a dispute between the NFL and the cable companies and Rutgers fans shouldn't be used as leverage. If the NFL and the cable companies want to fight, let them. But that shouldn't stop the NFL from letting this game be shown on local broadcast television in New Jersey."

NFL rules require the NFL Network to put the eight professional games it carries this year up for bid to free stations in the markets of the competing teams. Such a provision does not exist for college games.

A league executive not authorized to speak publicly on the subject said the NFL is unable to offer the college telecasts to local stations because doing so would destroy the system of television rights fees which help guarantee payouts to competing schools.

The cable companies allege the NFL has driven the price of its network higher than they are willing to pay for a station to run on its regular service; the companies have offered to put the network on a more expensive sports tier. The NFL contends the sports tier will keep its network from reaching a mainstream audience. The staredown will probably continue until the courts can settle a dispute between the NFL and Comcast, which are arguing over whether their deal allows the NFL Network to be moved to a sports tier.

Already the NFL has had to explain its dispute with the cable companies before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was looking into whether sports antitrust laws need to be reexamined.