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Sports are the one thing preventing a lot of people from cutting the cord. We’ve talked about this quite a bit. To date, watching major, local pro sporting events live online is almost impossible without the help of a VPN or bootleg stream, and watching other major pro sporting events live online requires either an expensive “league pass” style subscription (MLB.tv, NHL GameCenter, NBA League Pass) or, sometimes in the case of the NFL, cable subscription credentials (be they yours or someone else’s). Eventually, this will all change, and leagues will figure out ways to reach over and around (not in a sexual way, of course) cable providers and networks and offer their games directly to the public, online.

The NFL, believe it or not, may be the first to do it. They’ve just launched NFL Now (where Colleen Wolfe will be a lead anchor), which for now will be limited to showing game highlights, original programming and NFL Films productions. No live games. Yet, at least. The NFL gets huge piles of cash from TV networks – like the reported $300 million they got from CBS to simulcast Thursday Night Football this season – so it’s a safe business strategy to, um, just keep doing that. But the league seems genuinely interested in figuring out ways to stream games. From an outstanding (read this if you have 10 minutes to spare) WSJ article on the matter:

Three years ago, [NFL Executive VP of Media] Mr. Rolapp pitched NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and other NFL executives on the idea of the league’s own online video service. Learning from the mishaps of the league’s NFL Network cable channel, which struggled to gain traction with cable operators and faced skepticism from team owners, Mr. Rolapp asked team owners to back NFL Now by agreeing to produce a specific amount of original content for the video service.

Some TV executives worry that the NFL will eventually use NFL Now to stream games directly to fans, a decision that would echo its moves to build up NFL Network.

Mr. Rolapp doesn’t rule out such a move. “If the world shifts dramatically as people think, it’ll be nice to have an asset like NFL Now just like it’s nice to have NFL Network,” he says.

NFL officials say interest from the biggest technology companies has ballooned in the last two years as they put more importance on high-quality, exclusive content over user-generated or older-season content.

Companies such as Amazon.com Inc., AMZN -0.33% Facebook, Netflix Inc. and Google’s YouTube are “going to realize: ‘I need differentiated and premium content, and that’s how I’m going to make my business,'” Mr. Rolapp says. “Eventually, that leads to our doors.”

This season, the NFL hopes to increase awareness of its Thursday night games so it can auction next year’s package for even more than what CBS is paying. NFL officials believe online providers will be interested.

The thought is the NFL could offer Thursday night games next season to, say, YouTube, or Netflix, or Amazon, or, hell, why not Twitch? Or, maybe, they could stream them themselves on NFL Now. No one knows. The NFL doesn’t know. Cable providers don’t know. Networks don’t know.

What we do know is that, right now, we’re at an awkward, formative-years crossroads with streaming sports. Sticking with just the NFL to prevent this from turning into the 3,000-word post I’ve been working on since May… here’s some of the teenage, pimply-faced, testosterone-infused, we’re going to look back on this some day and shake our damn heads options for streaming NFL games:

DirectTV: YOU CAN STREAM GAMES without getting a satellite dish… if you live in an area, like New York, where having a satellite dish is not really feasible.

NBC: You’ve been able to stream SNF for several years now… with cable credentials.

ESPN: You’ll be able to stream games this year… with cable credentials.

FOX: You’ll be able to stream games this year… with cable credentials… and only in-market games.

CBS: Um… maybe? Probably not?

On your phone: Only if you have Verizon, you can get select local and primetime games.

Meanwhile, you can get near real-time highlights on Twitter, Xbox and NFL Now.

It’s all a mess. At some point, someone needs to unify streaming options, for everything and especially for sports. It’s all getting insanely confusing. I follow this stuff really closely, read a whole bunch before writing this post, and am still scratching my head about all the options to stream NFL games. Networks are of course mostly fighting these options because sports are one of the few things people watch live… which means they watch expensive commercials. But that won’t last forever. Kids and young people (say, college-aged and younger) grew up in an online world. They watch YouTube, not TV. They watch Twitch, not TV. They play video games, not watch TV. They do things on their iPad while the TV is on (we all do this). The passive experience of some behind-the-curtain person selecting content and then presenting it to you is something they’re not used to and won’t put up with. I cringed, visibly, last night when NBC went to commercial, came back from commercial, showed the kickoff, and went back to commercial. I think it happened twice in a 30-minte span. I’m 31 and used to this sort of thing and even I got so antsy that I opted to play Madden online instead (my buddy whooped my ass in an embarrassing way) and just score-check the game. Someone who is 18 right now won’t last as long as I did. They’re playing Xbox and watching highlights of their fantasy players in a tiny box instead of sitting through 60 minutes worth of mindlessly bad commercials over the course of three hours.

And yet, network people, like ESPN’s John Skipper (who has certainly embraced online streaming for the most part), say wildly out-of-touch things like this:

Skipper said he’s “not a big believer” that tech companies like Google will be successful at attracting large audiences for live events. “I’m not sure you’re going to go to Google to watch the Rose Bowl,” he said.

Yeah, tell that to a kid who’s watching on his iPad while playing Madden on his “TV” screen.

I’m well aware that this is a very disjointed post, but that’s really the only way to write it. There are so many unknowns and conflicting interests with streaming content and cord cutting, that there’s no streamlined way to present and discuss it. But anyway, streaming sports is painfully confusing. At least the NFL is sort of, maybe kind of, trying to change that, slowly. Or not.