Is there really any better holiday than Thanksgiving?

For three days, I spent my time back home in Illinois eating and, best of all, watching seemingly every televised football games. After the two NFL games on Thursday, Friday was spent watching a good Nebraska-Colorado game, followed by a less-than-thrilling Texas-Texas A&M game. Throw in some of LSU’s blowout of Arkansas, and it made for a pretty exciting day.

If that was not enough, this weekend was the Illinois high school football state finals, and thankfully, the local cable system decided to televise all eight championship games, with the four most exciting games coming on Friday. A game that ended in double overtime with a missed extra point, followed by an underdog accumulating nearly 400 yards passing in a win over one of Illinois’ small-school powerhouses was just the highlight of the high school football action.

Saturday began much the same with me laying in a prone position with the TV remote in hand, switching between the Missouri-Iowa State, Ohio-Marshall and Bowling Green-Toledo games. Those proved to be just an appetizer to perhaps one of the greatest games of this year with Florida and Florida State battling it out to the very end. While the Gators got hosed by horrible ACC officiating (and I thought the Big Ten was bad), the little Mel Kiper in me couldn’t help but begin to project where Florida freshman quarterback Chris Leak will go in the 2006 or 2007 draft.

But after that game is when I became disgruntled with network television. While I had hoped to see Pittsburgh try and win a Big East title over Miami, I got Notre Dame-Stanford on the local ABC affiliate. If it wasn’t for Hawaii-Alabama on ESPN, I might have broken my TV.

That’s the problem I’ve always had with network television and its “regional coverage” of college sports. What made the Chicago affiliate honestly believe I would rather watch a matchup of two 4-7 teams instead of a game that had huge BCS implications? Sure, Notre Dame is mere hours away from Chicago, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch bad football. And even when the Irish jumped out to a 30-point lead, I only got occasional updates from the Big East matchup.

But this problem isn’t isolated in Chicago; it has always happened. Ever since beginning my time at Ohio State, I’ve missed the annual Red River Shootout between Texas and Oklahoma in favor of typically bad Big Ten games. For that matter, it seems every week I’ve been shutout from big national games in favor of the same 11 teams I’ve seen for the better part of 15 years.

This is a problem that can easily be fixed by ABC. While I know it’s impossible to please all the viewers, ABC executives should take a page from its counterparts at CBS. During the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, CBS generally lets its viewers vote on the games it would like to see in the opening rounds of the tournament. While I’ve noticed most times the regional games are voted in, there have been some exceptions for exciting No. 8-No. 9 seed matchups that would usually be considered “out of market.”

Diehard college football fans have grown tired of having to watch the same bad Big Ten matchups year after year. While ESPN’s College Gameday On Demand package has alleviated some of those pains, it’s time for the networks to give its viewers a voice. It’s not as if legions of Midwesterners are going to become diehard SEC and PAC 10 fans; it’ll just give them a chance to see good, exciting football week in and week out.

Matt Duval is a senior in journalism and The Lantern editor. He can be reached at [email protected].