Hey NFL! Did You Watch the Gold Medal Hockey Game and Learn!!

The National Football League should really take a long, hard look at the Olympic Gold Medal Hockey Championship Game and the way it was broadcast.

The Game is part of the Olympic Event. The game doesn’t exist without the event. No six hours of hype before the event. No analyzing the same thing over and over again. No looking for stories to fill time that border on tabloid journalism.

NBC said the game was going to be live in all time zones, noon Pacific, three Eastern time. Five minutes to set the scene. Then they drop the puck. Plain and simple.

Intermissions between periods were the standard 10 to 15 minutes tops, just like the other tournament games and the same as regular season and post-season NHL games. No doubling each intermission to accommodate a “mini-concert” featuring The Who, Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney … and certainly no “wardrobe malfunction” to worry about either.

The game is about the teams and players … which the NFL seems to have a problem understanding when it comes to the Super Bowl. Every other game during the season, including all playoff games and the conference championships, don’t divert from the usual routine of 15 minutes at halftime.

Except for the Super Bowl which has a 45 minute intermission to milk the event for everything it can by putting on a mini-concert. That takes players and teams out of the routine each is used to based on the symmetry of halftimes during the season.

That’s unfair to the players and teams, especially the ones that have to dig themselves out of a two touchdown hole, to have to sit and wait an extra half hour to get used to the hitting and speed of the game again after that extended “down time” between halves.

Whereas the Gold Medal Championship Game is part of the “Olympic Event”, it’s the opposite with the Super Bowl. Without the Super Bowl Game, there is no Event.

The Event is the Game with the participating players and teams having priority over glorified “variety shows with over-the-hill bands“. Everything else is just a glorified “tail-gate party”. An expensive one at that.

NFL, just tee it up and play!!