For NFL fanatics, Sunday Ticket is way to go

So here's the deal.

You can watch NFL games every Sunday afternoon on CBS and Fox, every Sunday night on NBC. That's kind of the old-fashioned way, accepting what the networks give you, but it doesn't cost anything extra.

For the estimated 98 million people in the country who get ESPN as part of basic cable, NFL viewing also includes "Monday Night Football."

Plus, at this time of year you also get Saturday football on the networks plus all the pregame and postgame shows full of analysis and NFL chatter.

There has been much more throughout the season: There's the NFL Network, which has had games on Thursdays the second half of the season. Not everybody's cable system carries the NFL Network, but if yours does or you have satellite television (Dish Network, DirecTV), you get the games, more analysis shows and even special packages like last Saturday's 17 hours of Dallas Cowboys retrospective.

You can even, if you have a Sprint phone with a database plan, watch or listen to the NFL Network games on your mobile phone.

But the ultimate experience has been available for the most fervid NFL fan: the NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV. That would be those of you who have been playing in a fantasy league, who want to watch the Game Mix channel with eight games at the same time and track, well, everything.

That is for those who want to go to one channel and check off the names of fantasy players and who can also jump to another channel called the Red Zone where a frantically under control host named Andrew Siciliano verbally scrambles from Green Bay to Atlanta to Denver to San Francisco, performing word gymnastics along the way.

You are Californian Wayne Runyon, a labor relations attorney for 20th Century Fox who works in Sherman Oaks, lives in Laguna Hills and, along with 14-year-old son Tyler, 13-year-old son Jacob, 10-year-old daughter Delaney and wife Sharon happily participates in all the interactive features.

"The real reason I got DirecTV," Runyon said, "was I got tired of watching crummy football on Sundays. ... My sons are fantasy football guys and now we can watch eight games at once, scroll through them all, highlight one of the eight, get the audio. I'm not embarrassed to say, this maximizes my experience."

Eric Shanks, DirecTV's executive vice president for entertainment, said he got the idea for "football, perfected, all the best bits live and commercial-free, the perfect football afternoon," when he lived in Italy and saw Sky Sport Italia do a soccer day of commercial-free live looks at every game.

Shanks said that of a 3 1/2-hour NFL game, "there's 23 minutes of football from snap to whistle and we don't show you any of the down time."

''The only way my 10-year-old will sit and watch football is the Red Zone," he said.

Runyon said his teenage sons also prefer to watch the NFL in highlight chunks, eight games at a time, fantasy team players highlighted.

Are Tyler and Jacob being raised as highlight junkies? Will they ever be inclined to buy a ticket, go to a stadium and sit through a 3 1/2-hour game?

"I think so," Runyon said. "But if they have the choice, they'd probably rather go to a Lakers game and watch Sunday Ticket at home."