NFL Blackout Policy May Be Disappearing Today

By the end of the day today, it's quite likely that there will no longer be a "blackout policy" when it comes to the televising of National Football League games.

The Federal Communications Commission is going to be voting on whether or not to get rid of the policy that requires a team to black out broadcasts of their home games if they don't sell 85% of the available tickets.

Pro Football Talk has a lot of the particulars about the vote.

The National Football League has long used the "blackout" policy to attempt to sell remaining tickets to games through the thread of fans not being able to see the game unless they're there. Fans have also attempted on numerous occasions to use blackouts as a way of painting a team's fans as "bad," such as when the Vikings had difficulty selling tickets to their 2008 playoff game against the Philadelphia Eagles. They required multiple extensions, but eventually got the required number of tickets sold.

(After all, only really bad teams with really bad fans would require multiple extensions to sell out a home playoff game, am I right?)

But hopefully, by close of business today, all of the talk of blackouts and things of that nature will be a thing of the past. It sounds like it would be a surprise if the policy was still in place after today, but we've been surprised before.