Thursday Night TV Sports: College Football & NBA Cover For Hideous NFL Game

The critics of the NFL’s insistence on putting a game on every Thursday night–which include yours truly–aren’t going to be placate by the awful fare the league insists on serving up tonight. It’s Houston-Jacksonville (8:25 PM ET, NFL), a game that can only have interest for the following…

*Fantasy owners of Maurice Jones-Drew and Andre Johnson
*Gambling degenerates
*The parents of the players

As such, I’m not going to enable the NFL obsession of our national sports media by giving this game any more attention than it deserves, other than to make a pick of Jacksonville (+155) on the moneyline for an outright win.

The more interesting game in Thursday night TV sports  is in the college ranks, where Louisville goes to Cincinnati (7:30 PM ET, ESPN). Louisville is playing to nail down an 11-1 season, but Cincinnati still has hopes of making it to the BCS.

It’s a longshot–the Bearcats would need to win this game as a three-point underdog, hope SMU stuns Central Florida on Saturday, and then even at that, Cincy still has to be ranked higher than UCF in the final BCS standings. The Bearcats are currently unranked while the Knights are 16th.

It amounts to a tough hill to climb, but the game should be good and it’s a lot better than what the NFL is offering. If you really want to watch two lousy teams, just opt for an NBA game–the struggling Brooklyn Nets and New York Knicks tip off at 7 PM ET on TNT. Neither team is in the top eight of the awful Eastern Conference, but unlike Houston-Jacksonville, each has hope of better days ahead.