Strange that on most any other day, your choices on television pretty much suck. But not this last Monday. Even with two TiVos, there were not enough feeds to go around.

First off, you have to know I’m a rabid Dallas Cowboys fan. When the Cowboys play, I watch. They played on Monday which is central to all the conflicts that follow. Another major culprit is Dancing with the Stars. I won’t watch that crap, but my wife does, and it seems to be on a couple of hours at least two or three times a week.

So we had a football game kicking off around 6:30p (all times are Mountain). Dancing with the Stars gets jiggywiddit at 7p. Heroes is also on at 7:00, as is How I Met Your Mother and House. All worth watching, but sacrifices had to be made with only four feeds to go around.
House is usually the first to go. The kids get HIMYM and I try to keep up with Heroes as much as possible. So, I watch the game, the wife watches Dancing, and HIMYM and Heroes get stored for later. So far, so good.

The real conflict doesn’t occur until 8p. Dancing goes into its second mind-numbing hour and the game is going strong (though my Cowboys are struggling). Two and a Half Men is a family favorite and I’m committed to also checking out Trauma‘s premiere. Unfortunately, Lie to Me is not as easily discarded around my house as, well, House.

I’m left with no option but to switch away from the game for the duration of Two and Half Men. Normally, we would also watch whichever sitcom ABC has slotted in the follow-up position as well (currently Big Bang Theory which I find oddly enjoyable). But I have to get back to the game by then.

Fortunately, the rest of the night goes much more smoothly. At 9p, Jay Leno is unwatchable on NBC and both Fox and CW have given up by then. I could even watch CSI: Miami if I were so inclined, which I almost never am. So I get to watch the end of a pretty good game in peace.
Mondays, it would seem, are going to continue to be a challenge the rest of this fall, at least as long as there is a football game worth watching.

There have been some fantastic sportscasting teams in the booth for NFL games on every Monday night for decades.  Gifford, Meredith, Cossell, Madden, Michaels … hell, even Dierdorf and Boomer.  This current crew falls well short of fantastic.  Try pathetic.  Maybe Ron Jaworski and Mike Tirico could make it work as a duo (I have my doubts) but any chance for success is doomed with the addition of Tony Kornheiser.

That man really needs to shut the hell up.

That was a great game between Dallas and Philadelphia on Monday.  It was nearly spoiled by Kornheiser’s endless, senseless, and ill-timed ramblings.  It didn’t help that the production booth seemed to forget they actually had replay cameras to work with.  Seriously, all the fancy graphics mean nothing if the guys in the booth (either booth) are not watching the same game I am.