No Fun League

[Chas]

Well, we are going to cancel our SuperBowl party. Like a lot of churches across the nation, our church has had an annual SuperBowl party. We put the game on a huge screen, take out the chairs and bring in recliners, couches, or whatever folks can bring in. We have surround sound, fun videos and commercials from past SuperBowls to fill in the commercial breaks and half time - to keep it G rated.

Lots of time and a bit of money has been invested getting together gear and people. Some of the men of the church are even set to run around with trucks and vans bringing the elderly folks who want to come enjoy the game and the party, LayZBoy and all.

We have inflatable jumers rented, mobile rock climb walls on the way, games and contests planned for the kiddies, and a couple dozen pizzas ordered.

And now we find that the NFL will allow bars to show it, but not churches.

Bummer.

Game's off.

We have a coffee shop on campus, but the main TV is over 55", and there are several smaller screens scattered around, so even that runs afoul of the law.

Anyone need fourty pounds of hot dogs, fourty pounds of extra lean ground beef, two or three racks of buns and about ten thousand potato chips of all types? Oh, and enough chili to feed Terminator's brother-in-law.

 

[Tman122]

If your not charging an admission why would it be anything but a bunch of people gathering to watch the publicly televised game? Don't tell me it's a California thing. We do what we want in Minnesota. There are a couple of the golf domes showing the game for contest winners. Thousands of people and a whole bunch of TV's.

[wmccall]

There was an article in our paper that many of the local churches are going ahead with the parties they had planned anyway.  Agreed the NFL is totally off base on this one. I doubt the NFL would actually go after a church that charged no admission.  But then again there is that whole thing about Ceaser's face on the coin.  

[Chas]

Well, it's changing as the minutes tick by.

I just got off the phone with a man who is the president of the local Community Access Cable television station. He goes to our church and is in charge of the media stuff: video and sound. He has been digging into this since yesterday afternoon, and he is convinced we can leagally go forward. We would not do it if it were not legal.

For starters, we are not charging admission, never have. We were going to sell the hot dogs and hamburgers, but only to cover costs so we are changing that to a suggested donation. No dough? Have one on the house. I'm kicking in some as a 'corporate sponsor' to make up any shortfall.

But second, he looked over our contract with Direct TV, and we have been paying extra for a commercial license for years. So by his interpretation it is ok for us to display the content. He said there are some fine points to this, but that if an NFL lawyer were to walk in he would have a very tough time finding anything truly illegal.

Third, the local district attorney is a member of our congregation - an active, Godly member who does a gracious and wonderful job of keeping us moving down the path in legal matters. He seems to agree.

So at least in our little corner it's GAME ON!

We will not be airing the commercials nor the halftime show - we have other material put together for those times, and I hope it all turns out to be the fun family event it has been in the past few years. We have a lot of sports fans in our church - our pastor is from the East Coast so we have healthy fun with his lingering loylaties in that regard...


 8-)

[Steve]

That's a great idea! I really don't understand why the structure of the building makes a difference for watching a football game? If your house was shaped like a church, would you need permission from the NFL? Maybe they think that all of you praying make give one team the upper hand?

Have fun!

[wmccall]

There was also a rule by the NFL about the size of the screen.  Sports bars were not allowed to show the game on a screen bigger than 60".

EVery year we have a friend who invites about 100 people and they project and OSU game onto their garage. About a 20' screen.

[Chas]

I got the impression that doing so in a private residence is ok.

We ended up having the whole shebang as planned. And even with a suggested donation, we "sold" enough hamburgers and hotdogs to send money to build a trade school in Honduras.

Win win.

BTW - how was the game? I was too busy to watch.

 8-)

[Tman122]

It started out as a good game, and the bears gave it a valiant effort, but whenever your d-fence is on the field for as much as the bears d-fence was, ya start to wear down. Indy covered the spread and all is good.

[drewstar]

Huh? This show is being broadcast across public airways.   You're not rebroadcasting it. You're watching it. Your watching thier comercials, thier broadcasters, thier logos.


This wont stand a chance in court if it was ever challageged.

[wmccall]

Huh? This show is being broadcast across public airways.   You're not rebroadcasting it. You're watching it. Your watching thier comercials, thier broadcasters, thier logos.


This wont stand a chance in court if it was ever challageged.

Your probably right, but the NFL likes to play the bully role.

[Chas]

You're both right.

There is another issue at stake here: as a church we want to be absolutely above reproach. I'm a elder/board member of the church (should I admit that?) and I am proud to say that we always try to err on the side of honesty, integrity and doing nothing which would even cause people to question the 'rightness' or 'wrongness' of our actions.

In today's society, it is almost impossible to do just about anything while managaing to not offend somebody. But we didn't want to just ignore an inconvenient law so we could go ahead with a party. We studied it, and figured it was ok to proceed.

We didn't air the commercials because we wanted to create a family enviornment free of crass, earthy or bare-breasted images... We used a digital time-delay system, and had canned content to fill in the breaks. We invited folks to go see the actual commercials on YouTube or other places if they really wanted to see them, and we ran some of the really funny ones from last year.

 8-)