Excellente

Watching the NFL's conference championship games from Cancun was an experience to behold.

I have not attempted to learn and speak another language since senior year of high school; that was after four years of strictly French. Despite having grown up with a good bit of exposure to Spanish (come on, it's New York City), it was not a language that flowed from the tip of the tongue. And so, for those of you who know, give us a little translation beyond my multilingual excellence.

The video that was originally uploaded and intended to live here was deleted, but it will be re-edited for proper use.

What was interesting about the Spanish telecast is how much the networks went out of the way to (for the lack of a better phrase) de-Americanize their presentations. First of all, the in-studio teams (apparently) are handling the announcing of games. Just as many international competitions may employ the same Throughout both conference title games, they did not show either FOX's or CBS's announcers and sideline reporters (or they were in view of the players in post-game comments coming off the field). Also, because these games were telecasted by Spanish-language networks, they were not laden with cross promotions of other programming, a definitive and maddening American staple.

However, just as FOX Stateside, SKY Sports (Rupert Murdoch's international telecaster) does show just five commercials over and over and over again. Azteca Deportes (the telecaster for the CBS game) interspliced the CBS broadcast with clips from the NFL Network.

And is you must know, even in Cancun, you can't get the NFL Network.

Runaway

"Do you ever think about running away
'cause i was thinkin' about leavin' today
We'll follow forever where our hearts wanna go
Maybe we'll live somewhere where nobody knows our names
Then things might change for the good"

A brief escape. See you soon.