So Close, Yet So Far

My wife complained that one of the biggest drawbacks to coming to the East Coast would be that she'd be out of range of her sports teams: Purdue University (located in W. Lafayette, IN) and the NFL's Indianapolis Colts. I sympathized because in Chicago, it was nearly impossible to get a University of Maryland broadcast (outside of 4-5 basketball games per year) and the pathetic Washington Redskins were tough to see even in bars dedicated to broadcasting all the NFL games each weekend. As for the Orioles and the Wizards, forget it.

Naturally, I was excited to move back East for the opposite reason. Being just two hours from DC, I expected that I would be back within range of the teams I support. Well guess what? Nothing has changed. Even though Maryland football is the best college football within 2-3 hours of Wilmington, DE, you aren't going to get a game broadcast up here unless it's a national telecast. You will get University of Delaware and Temple football (the Owls currently ranked #118 of 119 teams in D-I). But you will also get a full slate of Big Ten games each week, including each and every Purdue football game thus far in 2005. Even the Indiana (#58) versus Illinois (#80) game was broadcast here. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. Turns out that this is Big Ten and Big East country. I knew about the Big Least, but not the Big Ten. Probably has something to do with our close proximity to Pennsylvania, home of Penn State. What does this mean for college basketball season? Lots of Villanova, Rutgers games on TV plus a healthy helping of Big Ten basketball, and no Terps.

Pro football is nearly the same. This is Philadelphia Eagles territory. Because of that, we only get two games each Sunday: the Eagles game, and the CBS morning or afternoon game not opposite the Eagles game. That lessens the odds that the Redskins game will be broadcast essentially to zero, since Fox broadcasts NFC games, and both the Eagles and the Skins play in the same conference. This means that unless the Skins play the Eagles, I won't see them play otherwise unless they play the Sunday night game or on Monday Night Football. It further doesn't help that we are also only about two hours or so from NYC. This means that when given the choice to broadcast competing NY Giants and Redskins games, we'll get the Giants game, as happened yesterday.

This means that the Colts will always have a better chance to be on TV each weekend than the Skins. For one thing, they are the favorite to win the Super Bowl and have Peyton Manning at the helm. For another, they play in the AFC and won't be preempted each week for the Eagles, unless their game is broadcast opposite the Eagles game (at which point the game is blacked out so were are FORCED to watch TO and McNabb, and I am likely to be sitting on my couch poking needles in my eyes).

DC is two hours away. So close to my Terps and Redskins, but so far away.