February 2, 2007

NFL Goes from "No Fun League" to "No Football for Lutherans"

If you're planning on watching the Super Bowl at your Church this weekend (it's a tradition at our church), you might want to make sure you're not violating copyright laws. Yep, the NFL is going after a Church for wanting to show the big game on a big ol' wall. According to FoxNews:

The NFL has nixed a church's plans to use a wall projector to show the Colts-Bears Super Bowl game, saying it would violate copyright laws.
NFL officials spotted a promotion of Fall Creek Baptist Church's "Super Bowl Bash" on the church Web site last week and overnighted a letter to the pastor demanding the party be canceled, the church said.

Initially, the league objected to the church's plan to charge a fee to attend and that the church used the license-protected words "Super Bowl" in its promotions.

Pastor John D. Newland said he told the NFL his church would not charge anyone and that it would drop the use of the forbidden words.

But the NFL objected to the church's plans to use a projector to show the game, saying the law limits it to one TV no bigger than 55 inches.

I would bet if the church wasn't originally charging for the game, the NFL probably would have overlooked the screen size. But once the media got a hold of the story, the NFL decided to stick to it's guns. The ironic thing about the whole story is you have two Christian coaches going against each other so you think the NFL would do everything to encourage church Super Bowl parties.

And oh yeah, I know the church is Baptist and not Lutheran but hey I only got limited letters to work with!

At FoxNews.com