NFL in a foreign land

Those who know the Monkeys know that we LOVE football. Not what the rest of the world calls football, where people run and run and run, not scoring goals and flopping melodramatically to the field at the slightest hint of contact, screaming in "agony" until it becomes clear no one is going to get a yellow card.  No, I'm talking NFL football. The real deal.

It's a little difficult to keep up here in France, but we're managing. Keep in mind we had DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket when we lived in the U.S. - which meant we could watch any game being played that we wanted to. Hard to beat that.  

However, we are lucky enough to have NASN here (North American Sports Network) that shows football, baseball, basketball, NHL hockey, etc. Even NASCAR.  They have the good sense to not show other sports while football games are in progress, and they simply retransmit the broadcast going on at home...no French commentators struggling gamely to interpret what's going on on the field like I've seen in some French broadcasts of baseball.  And we also have Slingbox access to whatever is being shown in Los Angeles, although the resolution isn't great and it cuts off on us every 5-7 minutes.

But the time change is killing us. What's a 1:00 game on the east coast doesn't start until 7:00 here. Not bad, but unless you're committed, you won't see much of the 4:00 games, and forget about the late Sunday game or Monday Night Football. NASN will, however, replay some games on Monday, and MNF on Tuesday.  Which leads to the Monkeys conducting a football news blackout every Monday and Tuesday morning. 

Oh, woe to us when we are innocently perusing one of the online news channels and we accidentally see a headline ("Reggie Bush Excels in Losing Effort" comes to mind) that ruins the outcome for us. We almost have to remain willfully ignorant about any news for fear of spoiling our post-dinner entertainment.

So, lesson to y'all:  We'll happily talk football anytime you want...Tuesday night through Sunday!