Blackout

My wife and I both went to the University of Florida (it’s where we met). At Florida, there’s a strong culture of interest in Gator sports, particularly the football team. So it’s become something of a tradition in our family to watch the Gators play during football season. We gear our whole Saturdays around the game, planning our meal of home made, completely bad for you burgers and avoiding other commitments in order to be able to watch the game.

Now, that’s not to say that we don’t ever miss a game or don’t frequently time delay them. When we had a dvr we would often start watching about an hour late in order to avoid commercials. Last year, we watched most of the games on the ESPN ap on the Xbox. But watching live is much preferred. When we’re late, I have to avoid the Internet so as not to ruin the score. Due to the wide net of friends who are also fans, Facebook is a no go zone.

So, today, we were all geared up to begin the season. We had the burgers prepped and the start time had even fallen during nap time so the baby was sleeping. And then  we learned you can’t watch the live games on the Xbox anymore UNLESS you already get ESPN as part of your cable plan.

Doing some investigation reveals that there is no way around it. You have to pay for cable tv to get the game’s on the internet. You can’t pay just for just that. I’d happily pay ESPN or the SEC or UF for the ability to watch the games. But the cable companies have such a monopoly that that isn’t an option.

So our choices are upgrade our cable or not watch. And I don’t want to upgrade our cable just because I don’t want to give them my money. We like buying just the TV shows we want to watch. No commercials and we can watch whenever we want. Plus it’s cheaper because we don’t have to pay for all the crap that’s out there.

Now, hopefully the games will still be available in their archives. We’ll find out in a few hours. That will suck but at least will give us an option.