Saturday, February 03, 2007

It’s That Time of the Year Again!

It’s Super Bowl® time and that means one thing to me, awkward NFL related legal actions.

- First up, apparently the NFL has no problem with you watching the Super Bowl® in a bar with a bunch of drunk guys, but they’re not too thrilled with churches showing the big game on anything bigger than a 55 inch tv.
I’m referring to this story out of Indianapolis where the NFL shut down Fall Creek Baptist’s plans for a Super Bowl Bash. I can respect the NFL making sure the church does not use the registered Super Bowl® name to promote the event. I can also respect the NFL keeping the church from charging anything. What I don’t respect is the NFL’s weak logic in enforcing its rights of public broadcast. The league justifies their disallowing the church to use a projector to show the game because it impacts the Neilson ratings for the game, but decides to ignore the thousands of sports bars doing the same thing because they always do it. So, the NFL has a problem with a couple hundred churches (at most) showing the game which would have little if any effect on the Neilson ratings, but the NFL doesn’t care about thousands of sports bars that could actually skew the Neilson.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against sports bars, I’m just against bad logic and even worse PR moves.

-Secondly, since the Chicago Bears are finally back in the Super Bowl® I naturally decided I’d watch a little Super Bowl Shuffle. However, when I looked for it I couldn’t find it. All I got was this message “This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner Julia Meyer.” After some digging I found this little article about the how Mrs. Meyer has set up her own website to sell licensed Super Bowl Shuffle merchandise. Usually I’m totally in favor of people exercising their rights as copyright owners, but for once I’m a little torn here.

-Lastly, this doesn’t have anything to do with the law (which is rare considering the person I’m about to congratulate), but congratulations are in order for former University of Miami Hurricane Michael Irvin as he has been elected into the NFL Hall of Fame.

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