As you probably already know, the biggest football game of the year was televised live this past Sunday, a match-up between the Colts and the Bears. And, depending upon where you were watching from, you also might have noticed that the game broadcast cut out for much of the second and third quarters. This caused quite an uproar on campus. Many people resorted to Animal Planet’s “Puppy Bowl” out of sheer frustration.
Before I get any further into the real meat of this article, let me preface it by saying that after I wrote my last article, I was accused of misrepresenting the facts. So in order to get things right this time, I’m going to just make everything up.
The reported channel outages occurred shortly before the end of the second quarter, which turned out to be an especially critical part of the game as the Colts took the lead. The channel remained out through the half-time show, and into the third quarter. There have been many plausible reasons for the outage floating around campus, and what follows is a list of the best.
At first, many believed that DirecTV had disconnected the channel out of spite for the RPI campus. Then they decided that channel 700 would be a much more appropriate place for the game, as few people on campus have TVs capable of tuning past channel 99. The number 700 was chosen after a DirecTV executive gained 700 pounds from eating the EMPAC burrito.
Another reason that was brought to my attention has strong ties to the recent Sesame Street sightings on campus. Students were able to gather that Cookie Monster was wandering campus, hoping to make his way to Father’s for a delicious cookie or two. He mistook the DirecTV satellite dish for an Oreo, and so ended the Super Bowl broadcast.
The final theory suggests that a certain staff member on The Poly couldn’t stand watching the Bears lose and denounced sports of any kind. He found the incoming cable line for campus, and a pair of garden shears did the rest.
Whatever the reason may be, you can be certain that many felt the impact of this ridiculous outage. It directly challenges the proven fact that technology is infallible, and paves the way for a cloud of doubt to hang over cable TV for all of eternity.
