The NFL Network Wants You to Want It (Published 2005)

Jacksonville, Fla. - It is nearly impossible here to ignore the NFL Network, the league's 24-hour network all about itself. Large plasma screens have been placed at strategic locations around the capacious news media center, the better to see media day interviews and news conferences live and uninterrupted. For hotels that didn't carry the channel until this week, the National Football League obligingly provided the equipment.

The network is clearly for the highly motivated, obsessed fan who cannot get enough football. It has no other focus but to spread the gospel of the N.F.L. machine through live and studio programs and the productions of NFL Films. Robert K. Kraft, the New England Patriots' owner, said he liked knowing that he can tune to football at 3 a.m.

On Tuesday and yesterday, to the delight of many obsessive fans, the channel showed a nearly continuous loop of interviews with members of the Super Bowl-bound Eagles and Patriots, from Terrell Owens (whose 81-percent-healed ankle might need an agent to field requests from the news media), Donovan McNabb and Tom Brady to Freddie Mitchell and Rodney Harrison.

At one point, Owens directed reporters to talk to linebacker Jeremiah Trotter, who was being ignored, presumably by reporters focused on Owens.

Simeon Rice, the 268-pound Tampa Bay defensive end, wearing a chinchilla coat while moonlighting as an NFL Network correspondent, shouted at Owens, "Big Dawg, what's the dumbest question you've been asked?" Rice then lent his coat to Rich Eisen, the host of the network's daily prime-time news program, "NFL Total Access."

Steve Bornstein, the NFL Network president, said: "We have the time to devote to this. That's the advantage we have. We have as much time as we want to devote to a story. We are not devoted to any other sport."