Shock & Awe - NFL Style

Man, can anything somewhat entertaining be shown on TV without people going nuts about it?! ABC decided to pre-empt the "dropping helmets" intro to Monday Night Football this week to spoof (and shamelessly plug) their Sunday night series Desperate Housewives. The short, as mentioned yesterday, featured Eagles star Terrell Owens being propositioned to miss the game to spend some "quality time" with Housewives star Nicollette Sheridan, who was clothed only in a towel. The end of the scene showed Sheridan dropping the towel to further convince Terrell to skip the game, and then jumping into his arms when he agrees before cutting away to fellow co-stars Terri Hatcher and Marcia Cross who were watching the proceedings on TV before dropping the "Are you ready for some football?" line.

In all, the whole scene was about as titillating as a soap commercial. While definitely attempting to be risque, it was more of a joke attempting to capitalize on the popularity of the ABC hit. But the powers that be are going nuts, comparing this to Janet Jackson's Nipplegate episode from the Super Bowl. Not in any frame of footage is anything other than arms, legs, or head of Nicollette's body ever shown. After dropping the towel, you get a view of her back. That's it. Even the conversation they were having was veiled in double-entendres and relatively conservative.

While admittedly, MNF probably does have an audience of young football fans, there was really nothing here any more contemptable than one may find in a common beer ad. One thing that has been lost in this conversation is that Monday Night Football and Desperate Housewives come on at the exact same time here in the Eastern time zone. While true that kick-off out west is 6 PM, when kids are more likely to be watching, nothing in the whole skit was any more risque than you would see on a soap opera that comes on in the middle of the afternoon.

So really, the only valid complaint anyone could file against ABC in this whole business is that they chose Nicollette Sheridan instead of having Terrell play gardener with the uber-hot Eva Longoria.

So please, ABC stop apologizing... NFL quit acting like hypocrites (yeah, that stuff in only permissable in commercials from NFL sponsors where the league's getting paid)... And to the people whining: Get over it!