Ever since the second week of September when the football season began, there has been a flood of television commercials promoting the new NFL Network: “Football is coming to Thursdays, this fall. Only on the NFL Network. Ask your local cable operator for more information.” The amount of advertising time that has been allotted to these commercials is ridiculous.

On the bright side, were one of the lucky ones (so I thought) to be able to freely access the NFL Network as part of our standard cable package. I’ve had a hard time finding the channel in the normal channel range, and only appeared in the 700′s meaning it’s an HD Channel. As a matter of fact, the station identifier is “NFL HD” signifying that it is an HD channel.

All season long, if you look at the program guide on this channel, you’ll get a message that says “Football is coming to Thursdays in November. Stay tuned to this channel.” A complete waste of space, if you ask me. To think that this is all that the channel is broadcasting is ridiculous. Kinda like the YES HD Network back in New York that would only show a blue screen offering information about the next Yankees game except worse. At least the YES network would broadcast more than once a week.

So, last Thursday marked the NFL Network’s debut with a game on Thursday evening (5pm PST). I didn’t get to watch it, but I assumed it was quality programming. Tonight, though, I happened to notice that the Bengals and Ravens were playing on the NFL Network, so I tuned in.

Considering that the Network has had just about three full months to prepare for these games, you’d think they’d pull out all the stops. I was completely wrong. When I turned it on, I noticed that it not being broadcast in HD, even though it’s on an HD Channel. You may not know this about HD TV’s but when you watch standard definition programming on a standard definition channel, the quality is pretty bad. But, when you watch standard defitinion programming on an an HD Channel it’s piss poor at best. It’s practically so blurry that you’re barely able to make out the players.

This blows my mind. The amount of advertising dollars spent to promote a channel only broadcasts actual programming for only 4 hours per week, for approximately 4 weeks out of a 16 week football schedule is obviously stupid. But, to then do it half-assed? They couldn’t even invest in a few HD Television cameras (or borrow some and send them off to Cincinnati)? Come on guys, this is amateur hour at its worst.

NFL Network — you are the biggest waste of a television channel ever. Even the local public broadcasting channel that only shows a list of upcoming community events is a more productive intelligent than the NFL network will ever be. Get with the program, and at least live up to the hype. What a waste.