NFL to Throw Fans for a Loss : League wants to sack satellite TV pickup of out-of-town games

You’re a lifelong Washington Redskins fan, but now you live in Southern California, a continent away from the men in burgundy and gold. They’re not often on the tube, so you like to hang out in your local sports bar, which pulls in the ‘Skins just about every week on its satellite dish.

This way, you not only get to watch your team, but you can whoop it up with the Beltway diaspora, who enjoy the common rooting interest and a few beers. In your new, more rootless environs, that’s no small consideration.

Better duck. The NFL is about to hit you like a Lawrence Taylor blitz.

The league has announced that it will soon begin scrambling satellite signals, ending the ability of sports bars and individual satellite-dish owners to latch onto out-of-town games by mid-season.

The decision apparently stems from complaints by television stations around the United States that people spending their Sundays in sports bars are passing up locally televised games--and local advertising. That takes money away from affiliates.

As a result, ABC, NBC and CBS--which, along with two cable TV networks, will pay the NFL $3.6 billion over the next four years for telecast rights--have asked the NFL to exercise its apparently legal right to protect its property: football games.

The NFL sees the current state of affairs as organized theft of the signals, and technically the league is probably right. But someone ought to throw a flag on this play and call interference.

The losers will be the countless fans of out-of-town football teams spread across our increasingly mobile society. Some sports-bar owners say their businesses will close. Others may try to beat the NFL with illegal de-scramblers, but the league says it has new technology to beat the devices.

A congressman from San Diego is promising to look into the matter. But even if Congress doesn’t intervene, the gang-tackling that the NFL and the networks are likely to receive is not worth the benefits to the affiliates.