You Busy This Weekend?

If not, would you  mind considering dropping some dough and heading out to either Arizona or Minnesota and going to a Wild Card Playoff game?  Please.  

Even if you don't like football, if you have the extra cash, do it for your neighbors.  Because, if about eleven hundred of you folks don't make a move, the Eagles-Vikings game and Falcons-Cardinals game will get blacked out.

As of late Thursday, both teams had been granted extensions.  The Vikings have 'til 3:30 central time, to fill the near 8,000 seats.  The Cardinals have a less daunting amount, somewhere under 4,000.  Point is, the league has been working with these two teams, but, the possibility of a blackout in the local markets does exist.

Now, to be fair, both of these teams report that they haven't had this problem in quite some time.  The Cardinals have sold out their last 30, the Vikings their last 114.  So, why the sudden problem now?

Well, of course some blame the economy.  Morons from the league office say that Wild Card weekend is typically the toughest sell:  "Greg Aiello, an N.F.L. spokesman, said wild-card weekend games are always “the most challenging” sales of the playoffs, primarily because of the late scheduling. Traditionally, Aiello said, if they are close enough to a sellout, the teams work with their sponsors to buy the remaining tickets."

That's hard to believe, considering that the NFL hasn't had to blackout a playoff game locally since 2002, Ravens-Dolphins.

The Vikings have been doing some work.  On Monday they had over 20,000 tickets to get rid of, and now its down less than half that.  It would be unlikely that both of these games do get blacked out, but, simply the idea that its a possibility is truly disturbing.

If there was a league that people thought was "recession proof", it was the NFL.  It appears not.  Though, it truly makes no sense that now the economy is having an effect on whether or not people are buying tickets.  They were there all season, so why the change?  Do the people in Arizona and Minnesota have that many better things to do?

Is Wayman Tisdale doing a live concert somewhere that I don't know about?  No, no, I figured it out, the T-Wolves are playing that night, against Chicago.  That's probably why people don't want to commit to a playoff game.

One way or the other, it'd be a sad day for these two teams to get blacked out.  Nothing says "pathetic" like having thousands of empty seats and your local viewership unable to even watch the games.