As a life-long Viking’s fan it is never acceptable to be swept by the Green Bay Packers.

Matter of fact, it hurts.

But Thursday’s debacle was not only a frustrating loss, but it was possibly the worst football game I have ever seen in my life.

Three first downs.

Three field goals, by the winning team.

And three hours of Chris Collinsworth and Bryant Gumbel bantering back and forth.

Now I am a homer, I’ll admit it when it comes to my Minnesota sports teams, but if we are going to lose, which has been all to common this year, I would like to go to bed thinking that I didn’t just waste three hours of my life, or any intelligence from listening to the broadcast.

As bad as the game was, I think the broadcast was worse, and that is a BOLD statement.

If I didn’t have DirecTV, which includes the NFL Network for free, there is no way I would pay to subscribe, after the games they have broadcast this year.

I will start with Collinsworth and Gumbel.

I have never listened to two bigger bumbling idiots for three-straight hours before in my life, and I worked in bars for 10 years.

I wanted to break my new television, not because of the frustrating coaching decisions, dropped passes or a game that saw 16 points in three hours, but because I couldn’t stand being dumbed-down by these two clowns for another minute.

I will, and I promise, count and blog on the number of obvious errors these two make during the next broadcast, if I can bring myself to watch Saturday’s game with audio.

I consider myself a football fan.

I follow the game and the players pretty closely, and without research teams and stat sheets in front of me, I knew half of what they were saying was wrong. From their comments on penalties, which there was plenty of room for commentary, to statistics, I think they were making information up as they went.

How embarrassing for the NFL Network.

I could go on about these two for three hours, but they are not going to read this, and I wouldn’t put my readers under the same torture (if anyone reads this) as the network put their fans through. So I will move to the NFL “newsbreaks” that the network cut to at least four times during the broadcast.

Now I know that there weren’t any other games on to break to. But the network broke to a pre-recorded version of NFL news and injury reports.

OK fine, it was pre-recorded, I can get over that, even though the viewers have to pay extra for the new version of prime-time games.

But the network ran the same two newsbreaks at least twice. They may have run them a third time, but I was in a blacked-out rage at the broadcast. A blacked-out rage that was not alcohol induced, because if I had been drinking during the game, I would have been in man-tears by the end, not full of rage.

So to recap, fans have to pay extra to see the NFL Network games that should be on network television, or at least cable. The new pay-for-a-prime-time game network didn’t even have a staff writer and anchor working to come up with a fresh newsbreak or even a new Brett Favre tid-bit. Then they re-ran the two pre-recorded game-breaks at least twice.

Oh, and I went to bed with a headache induced by two commentators, who couldn’t put a factually coherent statement together if their jobs depended on it; and in my opinion, their jobs should depend on fact and coherence mixed in with some wit and opinion. I think I heard Collinsworth call himself stupid in at least three banters during the game, at least he drove that well-taken point or do I call it a fact home coherently.

What did you think? What was more painful, the game or the broadcast? If you say both, I would agree.