Big Packers-Cowboys game ups ante in NFL-cable squable

The Packers should be on local TV, Harrod said. If not, she wouldn't be willing to pay Charter, her cable company, more to get the NFL Network.

"They should provide it," she said of Charter. "We pay enough already."

NFL Network officials are encouraging fans to switch from providers that don't offer the channel to those that do. They think enough defections will pressure the major cable companies into concessions.

A full-page ad in the sports section of Monday's Wausau (Wis.) Daily Herald blared, "You won't get Green Bay vs. Dallas on Charter." The ad offered the NFL Network and more than 100 other channels for $29.99 a month through Dish Network.

Wausau is about 100 miles from Green Bay.

At Satellite Country, which installs Dish and DirecTV systems in Austin, Texas, the recent spurt of calls from customers wanting to sign up to get the NFL Network has been unmistakable.

"Everybody's noticed it," said Bergen Miele, who works in sales.

Other fans bristled at the notion of changing providers just because of the NFL Network.

"I'm not going to buy satellite to catch one game or two games a week," said Timothy Smith, a Cowboys fan in San Antonio.

At Fatso's, the sports bar where he is a manager, "the phone has been ringing nonstop" in recent days as people ask whether the game will be on there.

The issue of whose homes get the NFL Network and whose don't was a topic of conversation during a staff meeting this week at Woehler's place of employment, St. Thomas Episcopal Church. As priest, Woehler has offers from a couple of parishioners to come over to watch the game.

Consternation about the NFL Network's lack of availability could resurface the last week of the season if the Patriots stand one win from a 16-0 record heading into their meeting with the New York Giants.

Fans in the Boston area will get the game on free TV, but not those in other parts of New England.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, the chairman of the league's NFL Network committee, sounded giddy earlier this month discussing the appeal of Packers-Cowboys and Patriots-Giants. He was confident that airing the high-profile matchups on the channel wouldn't backfire on the league.

While nobody could have predicted Dallas and Green Bay would be battling for home-field advantage in the NFC playoffs, Jones said, the fact both teams are so widely popular contributed to the decision to place the game on the channel.

"It's no accident that two of the eight games are Cowboys games," he said of this season's NFL Network slate.

Last year, only three of the eight contests featured two squads with winning records. The best matchup was probably the 6-5 Cincinnati Bengals against the 9-2 Baltimore Ravens.

Jones used the example of the huge numbers of Cowboys fans in Austin and San Antonio as evidence the big cable companies should carry the channel.

"I don't think fans mind us allocating resources to build" the network, Jones said.