Greedy NFL tries to sue churches

Even the Almighty isn't safe from the National Football League's greed.

The NFL has very strict rules on watching the Super Bowl. (You know, that game I boycotted on Sunday.) Public viewings are limited to screens smaller than 55 inches except in places like bars where televised sports are regularly shown. Showing the Stupor Bowl at events that promote a religious message (or any other message) is prohibited entirely.

But houses of worship have shown the Super Bowl at their events for years. Lately, however, the NFL has threatened to sue churches that show the big game. A congregation of deaf churchgoers canceled its Super Bowl gathering because of these threats. Other churches also scuttled their plans. The NFL's greed regarding Super Bowl gatherings has been going on at least since last year when it threatened a Baptist church in Indianapolis over its Super Bowl party.

Now Rep. Heath Shuler (D-North Carolina), a football legend himself, says that if the NFL won't stop harassing churches, he'll introduce a bill that would exempt houses of worship from the limits on screen sizes.

But the NFL remains undeterred in its greed. The league has even hired undercover investigators posing as fans to show up at church gatherings to check for unauthorized showings of the Stupor Bowl.

As for football-related laws, I think there should be a law that says that teams that play in a taxpayer-funded stadium can't use the blackout rule to bar their games from being shown on TV. Local folks are already paying for the games with their tax dollars, so the NFL needs to just suck it up.

Then again, I've boycotted the NFL - including televised games - ever since it began frisking fans who attend games. The pat-downs were ruled illegal, but as far as I know, they continue. It doesn't help matters that when the Super Bowl was held in Miami last year, the NFL decreed that tailgate parties would be banned within a whole mile of Dolphin Stadium. The treason lobby that wrote this rule said this was because of security reasons (the all-purpose excuse of the current decade). The Miami Dolphins, who own the stadium, said tailgating would be allowed. But the NFL overruled the team - even though it's the team, not the league, that owns the venue. If I was the Dolphins, I would've told the NFL they couldn't hold the Stupor Bowl in my stadium unless they allowed tailgating.

Oh well. The NFL's ukase against tailgating is just another Nazi example of how you're not allowed to have fun in BushAmerica. Maybe the NFL really stands for No Fun League.

(Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120190701069036633.html;
Indianapolis Star 2/1/07;
http://cbs4.com/sports/Super.Bowl.XLI.2.401089.html)