Gumbel sucked as much as game did

The play-by-play of last night's Bears-Redskins game on the NFL Network (broadcast locally on My Network TV affiliate WPWR-TV) was about as bad as the play on the field.

Bryant "Kermit the Frog" Gumbel was quite awful, as usual. Analyst Cris Collinsworth was sharp, and delivered the best line of the night, summing up the Bears: "There's professional football and unprofessional football. Right now the Bears are playing unprofessional football. It's embarrassing."

Just about as embarrassing as Chapter Two of Heroes. And to think yours truly passed up Survivor for this (which itself is having a Rex Grossman-like season.)

The Bears-Redskins game, for starters wasn't like last week's much-hyped Packers-Cowboys tilt, in which people bailed out after Brett Farve got hurt. Last night's matchup had about much buzz as a Edmonton Oilers-Columbus Blue Jackets NHL game.

If Survivor can pull fourteen million viewers for an episode in a lousy season, if Heroes can pull in eleven million likewise, and the Bears-Redskins game can't even draw six million viewers on the barely-distributed NFL Network, then the NFL isn't as hot as they think they are. Especially with two bad teams. Yes, Survivor and Heroes have been crappy as of late, but their fans aren't bailing out on them en masse like Bears fans seem to be doing. Unless you're the Cubs, fan loyalty doesn't mean anything in sports.

On the bright side for the NFL Network, at least it wasn't a Dolphins-Bengals game.

***********************************************************************************

Meanwhile, a promo touting WPWR's lineup aired during the game and it pretty much showed why people don't watch the station. "We're the home of Law & Order spin-offs and Reno 911! reruns!" Who cares? Its' lineup is about as bad as WGBO-TV's (not so "Super 66") was back in the day, before it was purchased by Univision, and proved that the Spanish-language programming it put on was better than the English-language junk it was previously showing (all right, I know what you're saying. I'm nuts. But the Spanish shows have hot-looking Latin women, don't they? I rest my case.)

WGBO was your home for endless ultra low-rated reruns of Perry Mason, The Rifleman, and Highway to Heaven, plus plenty of infomericals. And even those choices were better than last night's Bears game.

With last night's loss, the Bears are pretty much done and WPWR can go back into obscurity.