(Phil Mushnick’s Saul Steinberg‘s View Of The World From 9th Avenue)

Citing the plethora of pricey free agent signings this off-season, the NY Post’s Phil Mushnick declares “with the cost of living way up, the NFL continues to abuse its ticket-holders while simultaneously maintaining its anything-for-money march toward becoming a made-for-TV, nighttime league.”  Please note, if you will, that Phil’s Newscorp employers are only broadcasting games on Sunday afternoons because they care about children, puppies and safe driving, not necessarily in that order.

Fewer good teams will play at 1 p.m., which was once, and for good reason, the most logical and reasonable time to start NFL games. More and more, 1 p.m. games will be moved, on short notice, to 4:15 and Sunday nights. Meanwhile, Monday night football will be sustained, and the NFL will continue to feed the NFL Network’s Thursday and Saturday night schedule.

Again: The better the teams, the later their games, the greater the inconvenience for ticket-holders.

So, with the Jets and Giants soon expected to demand PSL money, why would anyone, in their right mind, pay many thousands of dollars more for tickets when their team, if successful, will play more and more games that begin and end at inconvenient and even at once inconceivably senseless times?

Throughout the NFL, tickets to such games have become harder to dump, almost as difficult as those preseason-game tickets NFL teams force on season subscribers. Who, short of jobless and kid-less fools, wants to attend a Sunday night or Monday night or Thursday night game played outdoors in the winter?

I dunno, football fans who live in Phoenix, Miami, Dallas, Charlotte, Tampa or Jacksonville? Surely Seattle would qualfy as a not-so-shitty NFL contender, and a home game on Monday or Sunday night would mean a 5pm kickoff.