NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said recently that the reason NFL ticket sales are down over the past five years is HD television.
Oh, Rog, Rog, Rog. There are so many reasons that NFL games, like teenage boys, are better at home. I've mentioned a few before, but how about 20 more?
1) At home, you don't have to stand in line to pee.
2) At home, you don't have to stand in line to pee while watching a drunk pee in a sink.
3) The average cost of a beer at an NFL game is $7.13. In your fridge, it's about a buck. And it's colder. And you can keep the cap if you want.
4) At home, you will not get one of those precious beers accidentally poured down your neck. At a Monday night game in Phoenix three weeks ago, I was standing on the field when a guy yelled at me, "Hey, Feherty," as he spilled his Budweiser down the neck of the guy in front of him, "You suck!"
5) At home, you will not get one of those precious beers purposely poured down your neck. One night last season, just after a game at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, I walked into the tunnel behind Miami Dolphins QB Matt Moore and watched a man pour an entire beer on his helmet-free head. Moore looked up and said, "Really?" Yes, really. You should see what they do to Tebow.
6) At home, parking is free. At an NFL game, the average cost to park is $27.35, according to Team Marketing Report. In San Francisco this weekend, people driving motor homes paid $100. A hundred dollars! And do you know what those people did once they parked those motor homes? Sat in lawn chairs and watched football on HDTV.
7) The yellow first down line.
8) Your comfy couch. Have you sat in an NFL seat for three-and-a-half hours lately? They're approximately the size of American Girl Doll tea chairs. This makes no sense. American seats are getting wider while American stadium seats are getting narrower?
9) No prison holding cell necessary. Many stadiums have one now. I see cops taking people there all the time in the tunnels -- some guy with a swollen red eye and his hands plastic-cuffed behind him. Sorry, pal, there's no HD in there, either.
10) At home, nachos aren't 15 stale round tortilla chips placed in a plastic tray with cold Velveeta cheese squirted into the corner and topped by half a jalapeno sliced thinner than a Matthew McConaughey plot.
11) At home, the chance that a woman might walk out in Page 3 of the Victoria's Secret catalog is 2 percent. At the stadium, 0 percent. Unless Madonna is the halftime act.
12) Your DVR pause button, in case one does.
13) At the stadium, more and more NFL teams blare ads during timeouts. Does it really take 125 decibels to remind us The Mattress King is insane? At home, you can flip straight over to "Doomsday Preppers."
14) Wi-Fi. Only eight stadiums out of 31 have free Wi-Fi. Even in those, do you really want to check your bank balance while sharing your broadband with 70,000 people? At home, you can make snarky comments about others on Twitter. Very hard to do that in gloves.
15) Your thermostat. Last week, at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, a 40 mph gust broke my umbrella in half, which meant the sideways rain soaked me like a human sponge. And as I stood there, somebody hollered, "Hey, Simmons! You suck!"
16) When the game is over at home, it doesn't take 90 minutes to get out. In San Diego and San Francisco, we've actually finished the one-hour postgame show, packed up, got in the car and been stuck in game traffic.
17) There's no need to memorize that "Need Help?" stadium text number on the scoreboard.
18) At home, nobody murders the national anthem for you. Networks don't show it anymore. At stadiums, I've heard renditions that make you want to rip up the turf and crawl under it. One woman in Atlanta tortured every single note, up and down the scales, until you wanted to walk up to her and hand her sheet music. "Here's the actual song. You should sing it some time."
19) At home, you do not have to stand because the guy in front of you is in your view. Unless you live with Yao Ming.
20) Home is much, much cheaper. To take four people to a Dallas Cowboys game with hot dogs and Cokes and some souvenirs will run you $634.78. My God, you could get a 50-inch HDTV at Best Buy for $550 and have enough left to buy 84 beers.
Which is about how many the guy at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans looked like he had had the other night when he yelled, "Hey, Reilly! You suck!"
Finally.