St. Patrick’s Day in Hoboken is what some would call our town’s most-hyped day. Others would argue that the Hunt, despite its location (Far Hills) is the most anticipated event of the year. And then there are always the mainstays of New Year’s Eve, the Arts and Music Festivals, and Halloween Saturday.
But once in awhile a random evening is manifested by an unforeseen sporting event that makes Hoboken stop for an evening. So despite the risk of hyperbole, I’m going to say that this Thursday night, November 29, will be one of the great nights of the year.
For women, that is.
Sure, it will be a quality evening for men as well—especially those who follow not just one team in the NFL, but appreciate the game as a whole—when the Dallas Cowboys (10-1) entertain the Green Bay Packers (10-1)—in an almost-certain preview of the NFC Championship game in January.
Normally such a game would be played on a Sunday or Monday night on national TV, and in the case of Thursday night, the national TV part is a partial truth. But like the old saying, you can’t kind of get a girl pregnant, nor can you kind of be on national TV.
In this case, however, Packers-Cowboys can be seen in any part of the country, but not on Cablevision, Comcast or Time Warner basic cable because the game is exclusively on the NFL Network, a channel only currently seen on DirecTV.
Soooo, since most Hobokenites don’t have DirecTV or couldn’t even open an account if they wanted to due to apartment regulations (Realhoboken.com headquarters doesn’t allow dishes on its roof, for example), the only option in seeing the second biggest game of the year (behind Pats-Colts) is to head to the neighborhood bar or pub.
Go Hoboken single females, this is your opportunity to pick and choose from a patron ratio that will be somewhere in the range of 5-to-1, guys to girls…perhaps higher. Besides the NFL Network/DirecTV factor, there’s also the sense of urgency many Hoboken men are feeling in regards to it being crunch time in their fantasy football league games, thereby forcing them out of their living rooms and out to places like Liberty Bar, Rogo’s, Black Bear, Texas Arizona, Willie McBride’s, Dubliner or Green Rock. Then there’s also the college-holdover rule of Thursday night unofficially starting the three-day weekend that more men seem to still embrace more than women.
Women attending a sports bar to meet men isn’t exactly a novel idea, but rarely does a situation present it that prompts one sex to go balls out (pun intended) any other time then on NFL Sundays (which are usually already oozing with hangovers from Saturday).
So go ahead, single Hoboken…take advantage of a greed-driven squabble between a premier professional sports league that takes in $24 billion in television rights fees alone vs. multibillion-dollar cable monopolies that refuse where either side refuses to budge.
76 million people who don’t have the NFL Network across the country will be screwed, sure. But for the 44,000 who live in Hoboken, this night, like Brett Favre or Tony Romo, could go down as one of the greats.