As I do every year, I've generated a spreadsheet that compares the Twin Cities broadcast TV Packers and Vikings schedules and attempts to predict which games will be shown locally. Obviously, this is targeted toward the Twin Cities fan.
When I'm watching the Packers
play, the best seat in the stadium, for me, is my couch
at home. However, I live in the Twin Cities metropolitan area of
Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, which presents a problem – not all Packers
games are available on TV, because of something called the Minnesota Vikings
and the locals' baffling propensity to watch their ultimately fruitless efforts
on the field of play.
For a variety of reasons, I'm
unwilling to bolster my broadcast TV setup with additional technology. This
means I can only see the games that a broadcast network is willing to show on
the air. Oh sure, there are Packer fan restaurants or parts of restaurants
devoted to Packer games, but they are always very crowded and extremely noisy,
and my aging sensibilities don't take kindly to that much noise for that long.
Friends and family in Wisconsin are too far away to make a trip without
devoting an entire weekend. You would think I could make a run into Northwest
Wisconsin, but the football viewing area gods have seen fit to declare that
portion of Wisconsin to be Viking territory, a claim both ludicrous and patently
offensive, as statistics show that, in every single county in Wisconsin, the
favored NFL team is the Green 'n' Gold. On the contrary, there are so many
Packers fans in the Twin Cities that one could argue the extension of the
viewing area should run the other way.
Several years ago, a fellow
Packer-loving Twin Citian sent me an Excel spreadsheet that compared the
Packers schedule to the Vikings schedule so that one could attempt to predict
which Packers games would be aired locally in the Twin Cities market. This
intrigued me, and I took his idea and, with his blessing, ran with it. It now
has the predictions built in, based on a combination of an understanding of NFL
schedule and TV broadcast rules and my personal experience and gut feel for how
things usually shake out. Over the years, I've gotten to the point where I have
a pretty good picture of which games I'll be able to see.
Others have opined at length
on the ins and outs of the team schedule this year, with its two divisional
home games to kick off the season, to the tough run of mostly away games coast
to coast after the bye, to the fact that we face Detroit
in the last week yet again. It's a challenging schedule, but nobody hands out
wins in the NFL. Every year is tough.
As a Packers fan in
Minnesota, then, I tend to look at the schedule based on what I can see and
what I can't from my couch. Being a fan of the best sports franchise in the
galaxy means that I find it a privilege to see every game I can, even when
things aren't going the Pack's way. This year's schedule looks pretty good for
me, with up to eleven
games aired locally; maybe even twelve if a game flexes late in the season.
Possibly thirteen if the US Bank stadium roof “pulls a Metrodome” and springs a
leak, forcing the Vikings to shift their Sunday home game to Tuesday evening in
Kalamazoo or something.
I'll miss the Washington game
on September 23 and the ESPN-aired San Francisco game on October 15, and the
final three games are all probably out of reach without a flex, but the heart
of the schedule looks pretty solid. I can work with this. The couch awaits.
--> (By the way, I will entertain any offers of free tickets to a Lambeau game. Please pick a game I won't be able to see from home. Also, I prefer front row end zone so that I can greet Dean Lowry when he does his next Lambeau Leap.)
 |
