Arena League given a promotion with ESPN deal

As it turns out, getting dumped by NBC was probably the best thing that could have happened to the Arena Football League.

The announcement that Disney bought a minority interest in the league and will telecast games on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC is fantastic news for the indoor league and its teams, including the Utah Blaze. At first glance, it's a huge step up from the deal with NBC.

(By the way, that deal was terminated by NBC. When the Peacock gained the rights to Sunday-night NFL telecasts, it deemed the AFL expendable.)

Of the 29 AFL games the Disney networks will carry this season (19 regular-season matchups; 10 playoff games), all but three will be on cable. But, while this might have sounded insane a decade ago, ESPN and ESPN2 are much better places to be than NBC.

ESPN and ESPN2 are sports networks. They're where sports fans turn. They can promote AFL games in the middle of all their other sports programming.

Airing games on NBC was like being stranded on an island. Except for the Olympics, NBC has been pretty much a non-player in sports for years. And, coupled with the network's lousy primetime ratings, the AFL was hurting when it came to on-air promotion.

Now the AFL will have a presence not only on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC but on ESPN Classic, ESPN HD and ESPN2 HD; ESPN.com; Spanish-language ESPN Deportes; ESPN360 (a broadband service); Mobile ESPN Publishing (a wireless content licensing business); ESPN Radio, ESPN The Magazine, ESPN-branded services on iPod and video on demand, and ESPN International.

ESPN and ABC have telecast AFL games before (playoff games as recently as 2002), but did not have an ownership stake in the league. And, to all appearances, this is a level of commitment far beyond what we've seen before.

MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL will continue from March through June with the AFL. Only it will be on ESPN2 (instead of ESPN) and will feature the AFL (instead of the NFL).

One of those games will originate in Utah. The Blaze's home game against Colorado is scheduled to air Monday, June 4, at 8:30 p.m.

That's the only appearance Utah is scheduled to make on the Disney-owned networks during the regular season.

AS FRUSTRATED and angry as we've all been over the inability of Comcast and CSTV to get The mtn. placed on cable and satellite systems, once again, we're not alone.

The NFL Network still hasn't come to an agreement with Time-Warner cable and Cablevision, making the network unavailable to millions and millions of New York-New Jersey cable customers.

And the problem isn't just pro games. The NFL Network will telecast the Texas Bowl on Thursday. There's big interest in that game in the N.Y.-N.J. area because Rutgers — one of the Cinderella stories of the season — is taking on Kansas State.

At least the bowl games featuring BYU and Utah are on ESPN.

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com