So today at around 1PM, I flipped the TV channel to ESPN, fully expecting to see the first round of this year’s NFL Draft in full swing. I haven’t been particularly interested in the lead-up, but I wanted to get a token fix of Mel Kiper et al.

But, shocker of shockers — no draft coverage. Because there was no draft, because unlike years past, the league and the networks decided to slightly streamline football’s most overhyped offseason event:

- The draft will start at [3PM Eastern] Saturday, three hours later than had been the case, but only Rounds 1 and 2 will be held that day. The third round has been moved to Sunday.

- Teams will be allowed 10 minutes to make a selection in the first round instead of 15, and the time between second-round picks will be seven minutes instead of 10.

- Sunday’s portion of the draft will start an hour earlier [10AM Eastern] and teams will have five minutes between picks in Rounds 3-7.

The later start time Saturday is beneficial for ESPN and the NFL Network because viewership grows throughout the day. But the reduction in time between picks is going to be interesting.

The quicker pace between selections has greater impact than just television coverage and ad sales, of course. Teams do jockey for trades during that between-selection time, even if it is for slot-swaps to move up in a round. Potentially, that means a reduction in horsetrading, even if it is only for trivial fourth-round positioning.

Still, as much as I ignored the draft for the past couple of years, I do feel a void. It was a reliable background noise if I chose to tune in. Today’s mid-afternoon start didn’t work for me at all; as a result, I’ve peeked in for maybe five total minutes of coverage. I doubt I’ll catch much more tomorrow.

Here’s an interesting Chicago sports alliance: The MLB White Sox and NHL Blackhawks will be cross-promoting each other in their barns during 2008-2009, with offers including ticket sales and other baseball/hockey merchandising.

What makes this especially noteworthy is the speculation around Chicago hosting a future outdoor National Hockey League game, ala the 2008 Winter Classic in Buffalo. This development could be seen as the initial groundwork leading to U.S. Cellular Field (nee New Comiskey Park) being the site of an outdoor ‘Hawks game in a couple of years.

While Soldier Field might seem like the most iconic choice for an ice-over, I said before that a baseball-stadium option might have more of an inside track in Chi-town:

[Blackhawks president John] McDonough, of course, just landed in Blackhawkland after a lengthy executive career with the Chicago Cubs. So I guess it’s natural that he’d tap the two area baseball stadiums as first choice, because they and their overseers are known quanitities to McDonough.

Networking overrides all. The other advantage is the avoidance of potential conflicts with any Bears playoff dates.

Does this mean Chicago will get its Winter Classic (rightly renamed “Windy City Classic”) in the 2008-09 NHL season? I doubt it. The New York option, with the opportunity to stage an outdoor game in Yankee Stadium just before its demolition, is too sweet for the league to pass up. But I’m sure something could be set up for the ‘Hawks to take their turn in 2009-2010.

Developed as an accidental side-effect to a cardiovascular/blood pressure treatment, Viagra debuted 10 years ago this week, forever changing the prospects of limp-dickedness:

Since Viagra went on the market it has been used by 35 million men around the globe, and it took impotence off the taboo list, making it infinitely easier to treat.

Urologists’ waiting rooms became busier as news got round that the condition, which was rechristened with a new, scientific name — erectile dysfunction, or ED — could be treated with a triangular blue pill.

Personally, this decade-long journey has meant that I now can’t remember what National Football League game broadcasts were like before the torrent of penis-pill TV ads started dominating commercial breaks.

The Blackhawks may be the next National Hockey League team to host an outdoor game, and that’s just one of the ideas in store for an iced-over Soldier Field:

[Park District Supt. Timothy] Mitchell said the district would like the hockey plan to include a college contest and a way to allow people to use the rink for pleasure skating in a week-long event.

“We think there would be a great interest in citizens skating inside Soldier Field between the colonnades,” said Mitchell.

A practical Windy City winter wonderland. Hopefully the Bears will cooperate by tanking their season and avoiding the NFL playoffs.

Interesting reaction from the Blackhawks’ new brass:

But Blackhawks president John McDonough said discussions about Soldier Field have “been informal on a what-if basis,” adding, “I have friends at all of the venues: Wrigley, U.S. Cellular. I think they’d all like to take a run at it.”

McDonough, of course, just landed in Blackhawkland after a lengthy executive career with the Chicago Cubs. So I guess it’s natural that he’d tap the two area baseball stadiums as first choice, because they and their overseers are known quanitities to McDonough.

If you’re tired of seeing teams dog in it Week 17 of the National Football League season because they’ve already locked in their postseason berth, then you’ll like this: the league is considering changing the playoff structure to make it more record-based:

[NFL commissioner] Roger Goodell wants to make it so that in the first round of the playoffs, division winners wouldn’t automatically have a home game. If they played a wildcard team that had a better record, the wild card team would get the game in their own crib.

The idea is that it gives teams more incentive to play hard throughout the end of the regular season, so we don’t end up seeing something like a Charlie Batch vs. Jim Sorgi matchup in Week 17.

This deemphasizes the significance of winning a division, making that crown nothing more than a playoff ticket. I suppose there are scenarios where a division winner would still make it into the postseason despite having a poorer record than another conference team, which would preserve some importance for the division win.

Normally I’m not in favor of the disregard for divisional alignments, but I admit this is a good idea. From an entertainment standpoint, it’s better for fans to watch a “real” matchup late in the season instead of a backups bowl. You could argue that it robs the No. 3 division winner of a functional bye for its starters, but those are the breaks.

The dearth of creative impulse that went into the headline of this post should tell you how little regard I’m giving today’s Super Bowl clash.

And yet, I will be watching the game, set to kick off in a bit more than an hour. Go figure.

It’s not like this is the first time I’ve felt underwhelmed by the NFL’s championship spectacle; I’ve experienced this feeling for the past five or so Super Bowls. If I had to define it, I’d have to agree generally with Deadspin’s Will Leitch on how the overload of hype has taken a lot of the charge out of the game. But it’s not like anyone has a gun to my head — if I’m really so put off, I could just opt to ignore the game altogether.

But I’m not. I’ll be heading to a Super Bowl party shortly, and while it’ll be intimate, it’ll be Giants territory. I’m not going to join in the fervor, because I’m not a Giants fan. I’m not a Patriots fan either, but I guess the prospect of the historical 19-0 run prompts me to root for New England. And while I’ll be shocked if the Pats don’t seal the deal, the Giants have already defied paper odds by making it this far, so who knows what the final tally will be.

Anyway. Enough of the game itself. It’s hardly the focus of this Super-sized secular holiday, right? The TV commercial front has been (from my perspective, which I admit hasn’t been especially attentive to the pre-hype from that corner) uncharacteristically subdued, despite a new-record $2.7 million pricetag for the 30-second spot. But in other Super Bowl-related economic viewpoints:

- The overall money picture for Super Sunday impacts sales of television sets, furniture, and even snack foods.

- And on the heels of an unusually weak holiday season to wind up 2007, retailers are counting on those same football-generated sales to offset earlier shortfalls.

Chaz over at Dustbury got a real kick out of the pre-Super Sunday existence of an Amazon.com pre-order page for “19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England’s Unbeatable Patriots (Paperback)”. So much so that he took a screenshot for posterity.

Not only should he update that screenshot to include the new Tom Brady cover on display, he may also want to snap a jpg of the companion “New York Giants: 2008 Super Bowl Champions [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)”.

Yes, only one set of prospective memorabilia collectors will get their money’s worth. Take into account the money-hole that such pieces of publishing kitsch are, and interpret that previous sentence either way.

Of late, there seems to be a marked uptick in media complaints about the standings system used in the National Hockey League. I guess it’s because parity holds sway on the eve of the All-Star break, meaning most teams are crowing about being .500 in terms of points, even though that’s thanks to a surplus of one-point decisions.

And even though those one-pointers are no longer considered ties, I like the way Washington City Paper sums up its whine in the headline “No More Kissing Your Sister”.

Mainly because that time-honored folksy descriptor for the less-than-satisfying feeling from tying a college football game reminds me of Lee Corso’s expansion on the subject:

“Let me tell you something — if a tie is like kissing your sister, then a loss is like kissing your brother!”

So maybe the NHL should adopt that as the official league response to all those complainers…

Since this likely will be the last time I get to post this vintage Tampa Bay Bucs creamsicle-orange uniform photo of Vinny Testaverde, I’m going take it. Because today’s otherwise meaningless season finale between the Buccaneers and Carolina Panthers at Tampa marked the quarterback’s official retirement from the NFL after 21 years.

It’s too bad the only signifier for it was Carolina sending Vinny in for the final kneel-down to end the game. Given that the site was the same city where he began his career in 1987, I was hoping for something more. If not actual game action for Vinny, then the Bucs should have hauled out some vintage Florida orange, Bucco Bruce-emblazoned uniforms to wear in honor of the occasion.

Until the novelty of playing hockey in a football bowl wears out, it appears the National Hockey League and its teams will have some economic impact numbers to throw around when pitching future Winter Classics:

With four days to go before the puck drops on the outdoor hockey rink in Ralph Wilson Stadium, the Buffalo Convention & Visitors Bureau estimates the New Year’s Day event will generate more than $5 million in direct revenues.

“Our projections tend to be conservative, but based on local hotel reservations, this is going to be a very significant event for Buffalo-area hotels and restaurants,” said the CVB’s Doug Sitler.

If those estimates hold, the Jan. 1 NHL event will top the $4.2 million in spending tied to the multiday slate of NCAA basketball tournament games played in HSBC Arena last March.

Five million bucks is not super-huge when it comes to dedicated major-league sporting events. In comparison, the last Super Bowl was hyped to have generated $298 million for South Florida; even if, as contended, that figure is somewhat inflated, it still points to an entirely different magnitude of dollar volume.

But then, no one is touting the Winter Classic as Super Bowl-caliber. It’s a regular-season game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Buffalo Sabres that otherwise wouldn’t be worthy of special notice. The venue and date makes it special, and so it’s attracting more visitors and discretionary spending to the Buffalo area. That’s all it needs to do to help the league get exposure.

As long as the NHL restricts these bowl games to once per year, they’ll achieve their purpose, and everyone will be happy.

As loathe as I am to employ a decidedly overused phrase, I just have to as I ask this:

Is the New England Patriots’ pursuit of a perfect season creating the perfect storm for the National Football League in its efforts to force cable providers to add the NFL Network to their primary tier channel lineups?

That’s the emerging conspiracy theory, thanks to the Patriots’ two recent squeaker wins and the end-of-year NFL schedule:

No, the league isn’t raiding its rainy-day fund to take the Patriots to run the table, a bet that is increasingly popular in Vegas. But a lot is riding on whether the Patriots are unbeaten going into the Dec. 29 game against the New York Giants.

The NFL wants it to be must-see TV, but to see it you must watch the league’s own NFL Network. It’s one of eight games the league kept for itself this year, and one which some 70 million households won’t be able to see because of a bitter dispute the NFL is having with cable companies.

The more valuable the game, the more leverage the NFL figures it will have to force cable operators to carry the network on the lucrative basic cable tier. By far the most valuable game left this year will almost surely be Pats/Giants.

Take away the historic angle and it becomes a meaningless game between two teams most likely resting their stars for the playoffs. Make it mean something big and the NFL has a golden opportunity to force the hands of the cable companies.

The stakes are huge. If the NFL signs up all the major cable companies, it could be looking at revenues perhaps as high as $1 billion a year just for the network itself.

I guess the thinking here is that football fans will turn their wrath upon Comcast and Time Warner if the crowning of a 16-0 Patriots team is blacked out in most of the country. If enough cable customers wind up switching to satellite or other TV providers immediately afterward, it’ll be a strong sign that spurning the NFL comes at a cost. Presumably, watching New England go 15-1 won’t ignite the same passions.

Toss into this the flextime factor that NBC’s Sunday Night Football has in its hip pocket. NBC doesn’t get dibs to that final Pats game of the year — but they certainly are in a position to build the frenzy on a national level. Check out their options for the two weeks before season’s end:

- Week 15. NBC has Washington at Giants. Both might be in the playoff hunt. If not, since CBS protected Jaguars-Steelers, NBC might take CBS’ New York Jets at Pats — if the perfect season is still in play.

- Week 16. NBC’s Tampa Bay at San Francisco will likely be dropped from NBC. Best games, not protected: Fox’s Redskins at Vikings and Giants at Bills or CBS’ Miami at New England.

If New England is still undefeated by that point, you’d better believe NBC will help out the league by maximizing the exposure for those two games. It might be putting itself in position for retaliation by the cable providers down the road, but since the Patriots are already drawing monstrous ratings by virtue of the perfect-season dynamic, NBC’s short-term smart-money move is obvious.

Is it an active conspiracy by the league to pave the way to perfection? Extremely doubtful. But who doesn’t enjoy a whiff of scandal in the midst of a potentially historic season?

So yeah, I watched the Patriots pummel Buffalo 56-10 last night. Most of it, anyway.

And I wondered: Is this sort of game, whose lopsidedness you could see coming a mile away, really in the spirit of what the NFL’s flex-scheduling television formula was supposed to achieve (New England’s march toward an undefeated season notwithstanding)?

Call me crazy, but I thought the intent of flexible broadcasts was to showcase relevant/competitive matchups in primetime, thus avoiding late-season Sunday Night Football yawners between teams with a combined three wins.

Instead, it seems NBC is putting the premium on the probability of a scorefest — one-sided or not. At least that’s how I’m reading the likely flex invocations for the remainder of the season (I’ve removed the referenced team records, since they were two weeks old as of this writing):

- Week 13. NBC has Cincinnati at Pittsburgh. Not bad. Jacksonville at Indianapolis, seems better — but CBS has that protected. Fox put dibs on New York Giants at Chicago. Meaning, NBC might lobby for Fox’s Detroit at Minnesota. The best matchup — Green Bay at Dallas — will air on a Thursday in only about 35 million households on the NFL Network, which wants you to complain to your cable operator if you don’t get it.

- Week 14. CBS wisely protected Pittsburgh at New England, while Fox put a moat around Giants-Eagles. NBC, slated for Colts-Ravens, might have wanted Fox’s Cowboys-Lions — but Dallas, with six primetime games scheduled, is off the board.

- Week 15. NBC has Washington at Giants. Both might be in the playoff hunt. If not, since CBS protected Jaguars-Steelers, NBC might take CBS’ New York Jets at Pats — if the perfect season is still in play.

- Week 16. NBC’s Tampa Bay at San Francisco will likely be dropped from NBC. Best games, not protected: Fox’s Redskins at Vikings and Giants at Bills or CBS’ Miami at New England.

- Week 17. To help NBC get a finale with playoff implications, Fox and CBS can’t protect any games in Week 17. Best bets to be moved to NBC, which now has Kansas City at Jets: Fox’s Lions at Packers or CBS’ Titans at Colts. And only about one-third of U.S. households could watch the Pats nail a perfect season in their finale against the Giants — it’s on the NFL Network on Saturday.

To me, NBC is functioning on the premise that offensive fireworks trumps competitive balance or jockeying in the standings, at least when it comes to ratings. More people will tune in for touchdown after touchdown, regardless of the context. In that sense, SNF is using the flex rule to devolve into college football-like appeal.

All of which only encourages me to tune out. Frankly, by the end of the afternoon action, I’m pretty much football-saturated anyway, so I’m not complaining.

So, that cute little promo commercial NBC Sports was running tonight during their NFL preseason Sunday Night Football broadcast? Where Peyton Manning and Reggie Bush were checked into the same hotel, and they both wound up ordering prank room-service orders to each others’ rooms?

Yeah, it looked a little something like this NHL promo from last season:

The Alex Ovechkin-Sidney Crosby sequence wasn’t as extensive, either in length or comedic value. Still, it obviously came first.

As it happens, both spots were produced by NBC Sports. So I guess the network’s creative department ripped itself off. Not sure if the hockey folks should be offended or flattered.

It’s amazing to me how hockey columnists like Scott Burnside can’t figure out why Gary Bettman is preventing the Predators (or any other NHL club) from relocating to southern Ontario.

There are a couple of reasons. The more minor one: The now-favorable exchange rate between the Canadian and American dollars — which is doing more to level the league’s competitive field than the salary cap is — isn’t likely to last. Which means one more floundering Canadian team to have to subsidize in the near future. (This is a topic to delve into more deeply some other time.)

But the more concrete reason is that, when it comes to major-league sports, you don’t over-saturate your markets. And plopping another team in Hamilton or Kitchener-Waterloo — stone’s-throw distance from Buffalo and Toronto (and not even that far from Detroit) — effectively constricts the NHL’s presence, both regionally and continent-wide.

But no need to believe me. The National Football League itself encountered this very same dynamic some thirty-five years ago, just after the NFL-AFL merger was completed and further expansion was being contemplated. The football guys commissioned a report, “Socioeconomic Information on Candidate Areas for NFL Franchises”, delivered in December 1973 by Stanford Research Institute (now known as SRI International). It amounted to a detailed map of the football market outside the NFL’s 1973 boundaries.

The thought process of the Pete Rozelle-era NFL was dissected in David Harris’ 1987 book “The League: Inside the NFL”. Unfortunately, the book’s long out of print, and doesn’t appear to be online anywhere. But I’ve got a dog-eared copy, and the relevant section is reproduced below, with my notes:

At NFL direction, SRI made a preliminary investigation of twenty-four possible locations and then went into fourteen of those in detail. Of the cities investigated, ten seemed promising.

Of those ten, SRI identified the weakest expansion candidates as Honolulu, Hawaii and Birmingham, Alabama. The next five cities were deemed more promising as NFL cities, based on their current and trending demographics in 1973: Seattle, Indianapolis, Tampa, Phoenix, and Memphis. Given that four of those five cities eventually did land NFL clubs (and even Memphis temporarily hosted the Tennessee Titans, before they settled in Nashville), it’s safe to say that SRI knew what it was talking about.

However, when it came time to make the final recommendation for professional football best bets for expansion, SRI made a somewhat startling choice: The NFL’s most lucrative backyards.

Stanford Research Institute’s conclusions were simple: “According to all the economic and demographic criteria studied, the New York [Nassau and Suffolk], [Greater] Chicago, and Los Angeles [Anaheim] areas rank substantially above all the candidate areas, even when data are divided by two or three to account for a shared market.”

The demographics detailed by SRI presented the football monopoly with two fundamental dilemmas, both of enormous longterm consequence. The first was implicit in the size of the market SRI located. Even after adding two more franchises, some twenty-two percent of the NFL’s potentially profitable franchise outlets would remain fallow and the NFL would continue to be significantly smaller than its market… The principle question, as [the commissioner’s office] saw it was to choose from among the current options in a way that “strengthened the League and made it more truly national.”

The second of the NFL’s dilemmas was crystallized in SRI’s somewhat unexpected conclusion that the NFL’s best option was to put more franchises into its current three largest markets. But despite their independent size, Nassau, Greater Chicago and Anaheim were all still “suburbs” according to the terms of the NFL’s monopoly, and hence not significant enough for membership. In the long run, this stance would insure that the largest untapped markets for live football were not only frustrated at lack of inclusion in the NFL but even further frustrated by the lack of consideration at all…

Thus, the possibility of more franchises in the New York, Chicago and Los Angeles markets was summarily dismissed. The purpose of expansion was to extend the League’s monopoly, not reduce it.

“SRI did a good job,” [expansion committee member Dan] Rooney explained, “but they didn’t consider all the factors.”

In a nutshell: You don’t tend to the long-term health of a sports league by effectively imploding it thusly. Jim Balsillie’s efforts to move a team north of the border have been seconded by Canadian pundits who argue that hockey’s following is so strong that, not only would a southern Ontario team get support, but so would a second team in Toronto, and so on.

That’s probably true. Just as it’s true that, even today, NFL teams in burgeoning suburban zones would probably do well. But in terms of league macroeconomics, it sets the stage for ultimate constriction of the product. It’s in the same category as league contraction — again, the notion that shrinking the NHL’s footprint would concentrate its energy and revitalize it.

But ultimately, it’s short-sighted. The NFL braintrust didn’t fall for it three decades ago, and the Bettman regime shouldn’t let it happen in hockey now.

While the following isn’t intended to be a piling-on to last week’s “Horsie Game” brouhaha, it’s probably inspired by it:

Well over a year ago, when Al Michaels jumped ship from ABC to NBC to continue calling primetime National Football League action, I envisioned additional job duties for the broadcaster:

Of course, the Peacock Network also broadcasts NHL games for the next couple of years. Dare I hope that Michaels will work a few hockey games, along with the NFL gig? He should have plenty of time, since the departure from ABC means he’s also giving up NBA announcing. It should be an even workload swap for Mr. “Miracle On Ice”.

And yet, to date, Michaels hasn’t gone near a National Hockey League rink on NBC’s behalf (as far as I know).

In fact, the network hasn’t deployed any of its NBC Sports on-air personalities to NHL coverage. It uses largely the same hockey crew that Versus uses, with a couple of additions (Brett Hull being the notable figure). It seems to be a pretty segregated set-up, and further puts across the feeling that the NHL is strictly a rental property in NBC’s programming stable.

No complaints from me about Bill Clement and company and their on-air work. But you’d think NBC would want to leverage names/faces like Michaels and Bob Costas (and even John Madden, if only for general sportsworthiness) to push the NHL package. Broadcast personalities by themselves aren’t going to ramp up the ratings for any sport, but they’ll draw in a few extra eyeballs, and expose viewers who otherwise don’t take notice of the NHL. And there’s plenty of promotional value in highlighting Michaels’ “do you believe in miracles” background.

Why the lack of crossover? You’d have to conclude that the present low ratings indicate there’d be a low return on investment if NBC “spent” hockey airtime on its big-time sports personalities. That is, the contracts for Michaels and Costas likely spell out what they will and won’t do, and NHL games aren’t on the list — they’d have to be convinced (i.e., paid more) to take on the additional assignment. NBC’s probably not pushing them to do the NHL games, and the talents probably aren’t asking to get the extra work.

It’s a shame. Michaels and Madden aren’t doing anything else in the football offseason, and Costas can certainly squeeze in a pregame show or two during the Stanley Cup Finals. Instead, relative obscurity.

Is it just me, or did this weekend’s 2007 NFL Entry Draft arrive with very little fanfare?

I’ve got the ESPN live coverage on, and it’s supposed to provide a timely dose of offseason football banter that should last until August’s preseason kicks off.

And yet… I’m really not feeling any excitement as the first round ticks down. Not even the artificially-hyped kind that Chris Berman and the other talking heads strive to create.

Maybe it’s the result of my not watching any college football this past fall. I’m familiar enough with what went down and around in the NCAA, but it didn’t seem like any players emerged as can’t-miss type prospects for the pros. JaMarcus Russell and Brady Quinn are about the closest it gets, and no one expects them to do much in the 2007 season.

For once, I’ll be curious to see what the ratings will be for ESPN’s hours-long coverage. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a significant dip from last year.

Thanks to his uncommon youthfulness, Louisville senior-year DL Amobi Okoye is constantly asked if he’s really only 19 years old.

I guess I’m showing my own age when the first question that comes to my mind is: Is he related to former NFL running back Christian Okoye, “the Nigerian Nightmare”?

For the record: Despite the Nigeria connection, he’s not.

Years ago, the prospect of having to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was enough to cause a player to consider taking an early retirement from the NFL.

That was because the Bucs, under the ownership of founder Hugh Culverhouse, was a perennial cellar-dweller and all-around football craphole. It also might have had something to do with those creamsicle-orange uniforms they wore back then (which I always liked, actually).

Those days, and uniforms, are long gone. But I’d like to thank Jake “The Snake” Plummer for promptly announcing his retirement upon his trade from the Denver Broncos to Tampa Bay. I realize the reason wasn’t necessarily because he thought the Bucs were a black hole — he actually didn’t want to get into a three-way battle for the starting QB position, and retirement was his only way out. But the scenario certainly took me back to the old days, thus giving me a pleasant dose of Florida nostalgia.

Who the hell watches morning news shows, anyway?

That’s the type of question that someone like me asks, since I can’t conceive of ever wasting my morning time on fluff-fests like “Today” or “Good Morning America”. It’s a blatantly insular and stupid question, since those shows command millions of viewers every day, thus shaping the collective mindset; so obviously, plenty of people watch them.

But more people are starting to ask that question — and the bad news for the networks is that they’re women from 25 to 54, until now the bedrock audience for morning news.

Until recently, the programs were buoyed by expanding audiences and seemed immune to the ratings declines plaguing the evening newscasts. But in the last two seasons, the combined viewership of “Today,” ABC’s “Good Morning America” and CBS’ “The Early Show” leveled off. Viewership has shrunk by 4% so far this season — a slight drop, but one that suggests the morning programs too are vulnerable.

“There was a perception that early morning was bulletproof,” said Bill McOwen, director of national broadcast for the media agency MPG. “Now it’s starting to suffer from what its colleagues in the broadcast realm have dealt with for years: that other options exist.”

Reasons for the decline include viewer exhaustion over a constant stream of gruesome news out of Iraq, and a preference for online news consumption, including via — believe it or not — mommyblogs.

Of course, this analysis seems to miss the point of those hours-long morning news carnivals. They’re not hard news shows, and really never have been. The entertainment factor has always been the point: Trot out the soft news to draw in and engage, then sprinkle in real news as appropriate. The only big shift in recent years has been a ramp-up in the product placement and network programming promos, and that happens to dovetail nicely with the rest of the dominant content. The viewers who are now turned off aren’t the ones expected to be loyal to this format anyway.

What can the networks do to draw the ladies back in? NBC is giving the rock to newly-retired New York Giants running back Tiki Barber, adding him as a rookie correspondent on “Today”.

Barber has little interest in becoming the latest ex-athlete to sit on a panel and pontificate about the game he used to play. Instead, Barber wants to be a do-it-all news broadcaster. He has often cited Matt Lauer, the co-host of “Today”, as the type of broadcasting personality he hoped to become.

Okay, so Barber’s not being brought in specifically to address the female exodus. But his entry into the morning mix now represents interesting timing. I know my mom is a fan of his TV appearances to date, and she wouldn’t know a football from a mushroom. If he can win her over, he can charm the rest of the daybreak audience.

I didn’t realize that bringing the Vince Lombardi Trophy to Indianapolis for the first time ever entailed Hell freezing over. And after Coach Dungy thanked the Lord and everything.

What? Like that’s not the explanation for this damnable cold wave hitting the U.S. northern tier, mere hours after the Colts brought home the NFL’s ultimate bling? Not that the Midwest and Northeast are Hell, exactly; but I can’t think of another reason.

Yes, I am bitching about the cold wintery weather, again. Bite me. Seriously. Because I’m so chilled to the bone right now, that I likely won’t feel it.

Well, wow.

I feel very comfortable in declaring Prince’s just-completed halftime show to be, hands-down, the best Super Bowl musical act ever. High-energy, raw, stylized and electric, against a rainfall backdrop that only made it more vibrant. Yes, the medley version of “Purple Rain” made it even better.

Put it all together, and none of the previous editions even come close.

Well. At least not any that didn’t include a breast-baring moment.