McCain speech could be up against NFL opener

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We noted last month that John McCain's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on September 4th could conflict with the opening game of the NFL season. At the time the NFL schedule was not clear. And the comments on that post thought it would not be an issue:

• "The season isn't moving anywhere, nor is the game going to get canceled"
• "All of the alternatives listed are ridiculous at best."
• I don't think its a big issue..."
• Oh, Puh-leeze! Football is a money-maker for the networks. Political conventions are not.

But we wrote in that post:

This is a big problem for NBC and the NFL. NBC pays a lot of money to show NFL games. But there's no way they would take the political heat and not show McCain's speech, and its unlikely the NFL would want to take the heat either. Yes, the speech would be available on the other networks, but the football game would attract a major audience, and the GOP, would, and appropriately so, raise a big stink.

It just not politically tenable for a major network not to show the acceptance speech of one of the two major candidates.

And we now have confirmation that the NFL season is scheduled to start on September 4th, and that the NFL is aware that something needs to be done:

"We are aware of it and will be discussing it with NBC," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello (who grew up in Syosset) wrote in an e-mail.

Now Neil Best, the who writes a great sports media blog for Newsday, did call some of the options on the previous post "ludicrous". They may be, but one of those options, or something even more abnormal, will have to be done to prevent the conflict.