Senators Throw Hissy Fit Over NFL Network

In case you had any doubt that football has supplanted baseball as America's sport:

From The New York Times:

A group of United States senators sent N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell a letter Tuesday expressing continued concern over what they consider the exclusionary nature of showing select games on the NFL Network.

The letter, obtained by The New York Times, was signed by 13 senators, including Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Arlen Specter, a Republican from Pennsylvania who has criticized Mr. Goodell on numerous issues, including the New England Patriots' spying case....

Senator Specter has repeatedly called for the N.F.L. to make its games available to as many viewers as possible on free television, rather than favoring its own cable network.

Now, I love football, and it drives me nuts to have to find a bar that gets the NFL Network just to watch my team play a quasi-playoff game in primetime. But, um, don't our congressional representatives have better things to do with their time right now -- like, I don't know, regulate credit-default swaps? And if we're creating new universal rights for Americans, maybe health care should come before football?

• Cost of the Bailout: $7 Trillion and Counting
• Cheap Chic: Even Big Spenders Are Spending Less
• Lawmakers Press Executives to Disclose Their Pay
• Credit Crunched: A Special Report on Wall Street Chaos