The NFL grows bigger, stronger, richer and ever more powerful as each year goes by.

The 2007 season was what sports industries' dreams are made of.

Tom Brady and the Patriots went on an eighteen win run and were heading into the history books. That historical event was derailed by the underdog New York Giants in what is considered one of the biggest Super Bowl upsets of all time.

The ending to the 2007 NFL season was a fitting tribute to the never ending NFL story.

It isn't what happens on the field alone that captivates fans, it is also what happens off the field.

The Dallas Cowboys and Tony Romo's Jessica Simpson romance and Mexican holiday was a highlight reel on Entertainment Tonight and ESPN.

Brett Favre's magical mystery tour was the type of dramatic story striking Hollywood writers would have loved to have written as the old man of football led the youngest team in football to a division championship. This was surely, something most NFL experts did not foretell.

And then there was the NFL Bad Boys off the field drama.

Michael Vick and "Dog Gate", Pacman Jones and well, Pacman stupidity, and of course let us not forget the Patriots and Bill Belichick version of "Spy Gate'.
Hollywood writers can't compete with football's unscripted high drama.

This season the NFL will garner more than $20 billion in television revenue, more than $6 billion in ticket sales and unknown billions in memorabilia and promotions.

So what more can they want?

Its own network, that's what. The NFL Network, my fearless fan friends is the NFL's real power play. The NFL Network can and will control its product and therefore control its consumer base.

If you don't subscribe to or pay for the NFL Network you just may be squeezed out of the game. No longer can you watch non-cable stations with a pair of rabbit ears and expect to catch your local football team in action on Sunday. Those were the good old days my fearless fan friends.

"On any given Sunday", takes on new meaning when you understand that the NFL is going to be an exclusive members-only club.

The movement has already begun. The NFL Network reclaimed some of the games sold to other networks, games which most fans can watch for free, by placing them on a "sports channel" and then insisted that your local cable company place it on a base tier. Cable companies typically will bundle the package and therein lies the rub. Not a total sports geek? Tough dodo buddy, if you want the NFL Network your cable company and the NFL Network have you by the short hairs.

Pay me now or pay me later.

The reality of the NFL's power is clearly evident.
The NFL Network has very little to offer in the way of original programming. A few of their efforts are complete duds, such as Put Up Your Dukes with the ever annoying Jamie Duke. The replays are endless and Total Access, which is the only legitimate program with original content, has a pretty short shelf life.

The NFL Network aired eight games in the 2007 season, not much bang for your NFL buck, in my opinion.

Cable companies have resisted this power play and the NFL responded with a media blitz asking cable subscribers to demand that their cable company offer the NFL Network. Talk about greed versus insatiable greed!

Cable companies thought that they had reached a fair compromise with the NFL by offering the NFL Network as a separate sports tier, but somewhere along the line the NFL reneged and is insisting that cable companies offer their network to all subscribers, be they NFL addicts or not. So if you don't like football or don't speak a foreign dialect or aren't interested in how to cook pot pies, well tough, you will still have to pay for it.

The NFL was ready to black out the highly anticipated game between the undefeated Patriots and the NY Giants in the so-called secondary markets. They were hoping public pressure would force cable companies to acquiesce in the face of fan excitement.

But what they didn't expect was a public relations nightmare, something the NFL simply can not afford. Angry fans put the pressure on the NFL and its executives, rightly so, and forced them to reverse their position.

This not so subtle threat looms large over 49ers fans as the NFL has made it clear that they will play the same type of political gamesmanship with the 49ers and their fans next year.

The greed and arrogance of the NFL seems to have no limits something I was rudely reminded of as I watched the last broadcast of perhaps the best NFL show not TV, but on HBO. I was completely stunned as I watched the season's last episode of Inside the NFL. Without so much as an explanation or a sorry Charlie to its fans, the show simply closed up shop after 31 years. The "show the pros watch" apparently" wasn't yanked due to ratings, and it wasn't yanked because it wasn't relevant and it wasn't yanked because professional football isn't the most popular sport on the planet.

Why the hell was it yanked?

The short answer is that the NFL owns the show. And they don't want the competition.

If it resurfaces it just might resurface as the NFL Network's version of Inside the NFL.

Makes perfect sense doesn't it?

Up next?
The NFL Combine's Up Close and Personal Locker Room Lookers.
Here's a photo of Tom Brady at the NFL combine in his undies. The NFL Network decided that this portion of the combine was demeaning and therefore not televised this year.