Could one of the channels that's home to Mountain West Conference football games also be home to some NFL games?
It's a possibility. Not much of a possibility, perhaps, but there's at least an outside chance.
If you missed it, CBS and Fox just signed two-year contract extensions with the National Football League. The deals keep the Sunday-afternoon AFC package on CBS and the Sunday-afternoon NFC package on Fox through 2013.
ESPN's contract to carry "Monday Night Football" already extends through 2013.
NBC's contract to carry "Sunday Night Football," however, expires after the 2011 season. And there's some talk that Versus might go after it.
Nobody is saying this is likely. But you can't count it out, either.
For one thing, Versus has already shown its willingness to bid on NFL games. It went after the Thursday-night package that ended up on the NFL Network.
And, speaking of the NFL Network, Comcast and the league just announced that they've settled their ongoing dispute over where the channel will be carried on Comcast cable systems.
(Basically, Comcast will put the NFL Network as part of a lower-priced tier of programming, increasing the channel's distribution by about 9 million households. In turn, the NFL reportedly agreed to charge considerably less per subscriber per month — about 40-45 cents instead of 70 cents.)
This matters because Comcast owns Versus. And Versus really, really wants to raise its profile to something closer to ESPN.
There's no better way to do that than land NFL games.
So maybe upcoming MWC games could one day be promoted during NFL telecasts.
I'm not holding my breath, but it's not completely out of the question.
IT WAS A BIG DAY for Utah basketball coach Jim Boylen last week. And an even bigger day for him on KSL-Ch. 5 than any of the other stations.
All the local stations reported that Boylen had received a contract extension that will pay him $850,000 a year to continue to coach the Utes for five more seasons. And KSL named Boylen the Mountain West Conference's coach of the year.
Well, KSL's Tom Kirkland told viewers that Boylen was already the MWC coach of the year. Which probably came as a big surprise not only to Boylen, but to New Mexico coach Steve Alford, who actually won the award back in March.
SOMETIMES IT'S EASIER to be in print than in broadcast. If only because, while those of us who write have to spell names correctly, we don't have to know how to pronounce them.
And while it's not hard to pronounce "Dan" or "Joe," it's not always that easy.
For example, recently both KUTV's Dave Fox and KSL's Rod Zundel were extolling the virtues of Brighton High goalkeeper Paxti Shortsleeve. And it's always nice to see high schoolers get some face time on TV.
However, both sportcasters pronounced Shortsleeve's first name the way it looks — Pax-tee. Which is not correct. It's actually pronounced Pot-chee.
Obviously, that's an unusual name with an unusual spelling. You might think that alone would be a reason to try to verify the correct pronunciation, but then ....
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com