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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Roger Goodell wants to expand the NFL regular season to 17 or 18 games. Team owners, who would presumably profit from such an arrangement, seem to favor it. However, enough issues remain with the plan that Goodell doesn't foresee an owners' vote on it before their meetings conclude at noon Wednesday.

"Right now I do not anticipate a vote on that, but I do anticipate a full discussion," the commissioner said at a media briefing while the owners broke for lunch between their morning and afternoon meetings.

Goodell and NFL General Counsel Jeff Pash said the league would begin negotiations on the new collective bargaining with the players' union next month, and that the plan is to deliver to the players a report on the idea of expanding the regular season. While they'd like to get the players on board with the plan, it's also clear the league doesn't feel it needs its players' approval to put it in place.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The NFL and Comcast have ended their five-year feud and agreed on a deal that will put the NFL Network in about 15 million more homes by Aug. 1, the league announced this morning at the NFL owners' meetings here.

Since its inception, the NFL Network has been part of a paid sports tier option for Comcast's customers. The new deal moves the network from Comcast's "Sports Entertainment Package" to its "Digital Classic" service tier. It's a big boost for a network looking to get more exposure, and the league hopes it can lead to similar deals with other cable companies that have so far resisted the NFL's desire to put its network on more mainstream tiers.

More on this in a few hours, when commissioner Roger Goodell is scheduled to address the media on this topic.

Satellite TV doesn't work well where I live, so I am a cable subscriber. This meant I couldn't get NFL Network until Comcast took over Time Warner Cable in the Houston area. Comcast, unlike TWC, did show NFL Network, but on a special sports tier that cost more money. They were able to do that because Comcast won a court ruling that permitted them to put the network on a sports tier.

Well, yesterday an appellate court disagreed with the lower court in the Comcast-NFL Network dispute saying that the contractual language between the two parties is too ambiguous to rule for either side. From what I can piece together from vague media reports, it appears that the lower court as a matter of contract interpretation decided that the contract allowed Comcast to put it on a sports tier. The recent ruling overruled that saying that this isn't an issue that can be resolved by looking at the contract itself, but rather this is a fact issue that requires discovery and a trial.

It's unclear to me what this means in the short term: Whether all Comcast subscribers will get NFL Network, whether it will stay on a sports tier until the lower court decision is completed, or whether it will be removed off of Comcast all together. A spokesman for the NFL said that this ruling means that "ultimately" all Comcast subscribers will get it like they used to before it was tiered.

I guess this is a good thing for me personally if cable subscribers not interested in a startup channel that repeats the same "America's Game" commercial over and over again has to subsidize my sick NFL habit. Or a bad thing if this causes Comcast to take the NFL Network off of my TV until the two semi-monopolies take their good sweet time to work things out or has a court decide it for them.

Last month, Kevin Allen of USA Today -- as close to an idol-maker as we have in U.S. hockey journalism -- penned a blunt plea for the NHL to grovel back to ESPN "with hat in hand," making the case against Versus along the way. One of his most powerful jabs:

One of the major beefs from many players is that Versus is not available in any hotel that they have ever stayed in. If a network isn't on a hotel cable package, is it a real network?

The NHL clearly believes Versus is a "real network"; more importantly, it has identified the currency Versus uses to pay the League for television rights to its games as "real money." The NHL agreed to a three-year contract extension with Versus yesterday, as ratings have increased and the way the network covers the game is converting some non-believers this season. The bottom line is ... well, the bottom line: Comcast is willing to pay the NHL a rights fee (following the New York Times's math, well over $72 million per season) that no other network would seek to pay for the rights to regular season hockey games. The League is already in one public access deal with NBC; it came to OLN for the money in the first place, and it simply can't leave this kind of money on the table with Versus.

But what does this deal mean for the NHL's year-long flirtation with its old mate, ESPN? There was talk last July that Versus might waive its exclusivity clause if the NHL agreed to an extension. Terms for this extension haven't been released, but it would be stunning if the NHL didn't work out a deal that would allow it to share games with other cable networks like the WWL. Who knows: Maybe we'll have our "3 Networks, 1 Cup" postseason coverage after all.

As I type this post I'm watching the Carolina Hurricanes not blowing out the Montreal Canadiens because of a series of stupid saves by Cristobel Huet f(something I'm sure Habs bloggers will say a lot this season) from the comfort of my computer. Last month I gave you a first look at the NHL's video portal (The Habs just tied the game on the PP. BTW, Ward stinks) and after kicking the tires of NeuLion's streaming technology during the pre-season, I decided to ditch Cable TV altogether for Center Ice Online.

The best part is listening to the game in French on RDS and the commercials are not blacked out. I love Canadian TV commercials!

As I maintain a home away from home during the week, this worked out beautifully for me, because after signing up for the online version of the package I received an e-mail confirmation of my order and a rebate coupon for a 50% refund if I was a Center Ice broadcast subscriber (which I am via DirecTV). Since I don't watch any other TV, ditching the cable service was really a no-brainer.

The downside is that I'll miss the games on Versus, but I figure that the cost savings on subsidizing Comcast's Cable's franchise monopoly directly is more than offset by the half-dozen games I get to spend in a sports bar drinking Guinness and downing 20 wings.

Well, back to the game, it's getting nasty out there. And someone better inform Justin "I'm a Bigger Diver than Derek Roy" Williams that the regular season has begun. Eh, forget this game, the Battle of Ontario has begun.

Ta,