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What's your No. 1 fear if you subscribe to cable and you're a sports fan? Aside from the signal dying on the first day of the NCAA basketball tournament or on any Saturday or Sunday in the fall, it's that through no fault of your own you might not be able to watch your favorite teams play because of rights disputes between major companies.

We've seen it with the Big Ten Network and several cable companies, and we've seen it with the NFL Network and virtually every cable company. Nothing sucks more as a sports fan than being a paying subscriber, being willing to pay whatever you have to for the games you want to see, and still not being able to watch your favorite team play from the comfort of home. It's a constant dance between content providers and cable distributors over how much channels should cost, and fandom is the collateral damage.

The latest rights dispute that seemed likely was between ESPN and Comcast. Only it never materialized.

Jon Gruden made national headlines yesterday when he replaced Tony Kornheiser on ESPN's Monday Night Football. Kornheiser, of course, "stepped down" (as MDS, Ryan and I noted last night, that may or may not be extremely convenient) from his role in the booth with very little noise aside from the original announcement.

All in all, it was a pretty smooth transition. That is until SI's Peter King dropped a bombshell in his Tuesday morning version of Monday Morning Quarterback, teased via his Twitter account.

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.

This sounds about right: the never-at-a-loss-for-words Brian Billick, recently relieved of his head-coaching duties by the Baltimore Ravens, will spend draft weekend on the NFL Network set offering a presumably unique perspective into the inner workings of the whole process.

If his recent conference-call comments are any indication, however, he probably won't be invited back next year:

Billick was non-committal on whether Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan would be a good fit for the Ravens.

"That's for them to say," Billick said. "I think Matt Ryan is a fine quarterback. I think clearly he'll go in that range [in the draft]. Whether he ends up to be a good quarterback or not, you're going to have to wait a while for that verdict to come in."

Riveting. It's keen insights like this that ultimately led to Trent Dilfer getting released, and the Ravens giving up a 2004 first-round pick to grab Kyle Boller. And, ultimately, Billick getting run out of town.

Okay, maybe that's a bit of an overreaction. For as loathed as Billick was by some parts of the fanbase, he did win a Super Bowl and amassed an 85-67 record. Not bad for a guy who never once put together a competent offense .

And realistically, he may not have to worry about his next television gig because the NFL is all about second chances for once successful coaches. Well, unless you're Jim Fassel.

Last year, before the Patriots ripped off the Raiders by sending them a fourth-round pick for supposedly washed up Randy Moss, there was speculation that he could end up in Green Bay. Brett Favre lamented the sorry state of the Packers receivers*, and mentioned Moss as potential quick fix. Didn't happen.

A year later, it might. Okay, it's still a long shot, but the chances are better now than they were, say, a week ago. From NFL Network's Adam Schefter:

Those who know Moss say he is inching closer to the point of frustration at the lack of progress he has made for a new deal with the Patriots. The longer the Patriots wait to sign him, the more they invite other teams to begin recruiting Moss....

With Favre nearing a decision on his future –- some believe he will inform Green Bay of his plans as early as this week -– the Packers could make the decision for him. If they signed Moss now, those who know Favre believe it would be a dead-lock cinch for the Packers quarterback to play another season.

The start of free agency is kinda like drunken sailors on shore leave; money and bad decisions are pervasive, and inevitably, plenty of people will regret the choices they made when they look back on this weekend. All that differentiates the two are the dearth of strippers during free agency, although Pacman Jones is working on changing that (hey, he's got the time).

Anyway, everybody got paid today except, maybe, the best player available. Randy Moss, recently of the Patriots, wasn't franchised last week, which was surprising since he was coming off his best season in the NFL and New England was a completely different offense with him on the field. (Wes Welker had a lot to do with that too; the point, though, is that things are very different when Tom Brady isn't forced to call Reche Caldwell, Jabar Gaffney and Troy Brown his primary receivers.)

So Day 1 of free agency is coming to a close and Moss, who many suspected might already have a deal in place with the Pats, is still unemployed. And now, according to NFL Network's Adam Schefter, he's free to visit with other teams.

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.

Mike Mayock hearts Matt Ryan. The NFL Network's draft analyst has the Boston College quarterback listed as one of the best players available in April's draft. Mayock even thinks Ryan reminds him of Ben Roethlisberger. (Sounds like a stretch, but I'm willing to give Mayock the benefit of the doubt since, you know, he's pretty good at what he does.)

After watching countless hours of game film on Ryan, Mayock likes everything he sees except the number of interceptions Ryan threw last season. But there's a good reason for that:

"My conclusion is that his wide receivers at Boston College didn't always athletically match up against cornerbacks from good teams, like Virginia Tech and Clemson, and he ended up having to force balls, which contributed to the high interception numbers..."

The BC wideouts must be jacked about that scouting report. When asked to compare last year's top quarterback, JaMarcus Russell (Mayock really loved Russell's physical skills), to Ryan he offered this:

I mentioned earlier that the NFL Network's Mike Mayock is pretty good at his job. I don't think anybody would dispute that Boston College's Matt Ryan is the best quarterback entering the draft, but Mayock makes a comparison I haven't heard anywhere, and frankly, I didn't even consider: Ryan is a lot like Ben Roethlisberger.

Both players are 6-5 and big, have quick feet and are mobile in the pocket. Mayock makes the point that Ryan isn't as elusive as Roethlisberger, but he's much more athletic than he looks (just check out that humongous run against Virginia Tech last season). And perhaps most importantly, Ryan, like Big Ben, always has his eyes downfield.

Michael David Smith wrote that the Dolphins could take Ryan with the first-overall pick and that ESPN's Mel Kiper compared Ryan to Eli Manning, Philip Rivers and Roethlisberger (not exactly sure how that works). But here's the thing: if the Dolphins see the same thing Mayock does -- Big Ben -- they might take a long look at drafting him.

Bill Parcells, the new Dolphins overlord, loved Roethlisberger as a rookie. After a 2004 Steelers come-from-behind victory in Big D, Parcells offered this about Pittsburgh's first-round pick:

"He is the best (quarterback) prospect I have seen in 10 or 15 years," Parcells said Wednesday during a conference call. "I have not seen anybody come in the league like that. The only guy that I can say came in, and the first year started playing like he is playing, is Dan Marino."

Even with John Beck on the roster, it might be hard to pass Ryan up if the Tuna feels similarly.

ESPN's Mel Kiper has been scouting college players for some 25 years now, but the NFL Network's Mike Mayock is probably the best draft analyst on the teevees these days. Mayock had Jay Cutler ranked ahead of Vince Young and Matt Leinart in 2006, and never thought wide receiver Mike Williams would be much of an NFL wide receiver. Kiper was a Leinart guy and ranked Williams as one of the draft's best players in 2005.

The point isn't to call out Kiper, but to show that Mayock's pretty good at what he does. Which makes it kinda surprising that in his initial list of top-20 draft prospects doesn't include Arkansas running back Darren McFadden.

Mayock tells Paul Burmeister that he's just starting looking at the juniors, but he's watched three of McFadden's games and wasn't as impressed as he expected to be. "Great burst, great acceleration, but I don't touch Darren McFadden in the first 20 picks of the draft."

Wow. Obviously, it's still early in the process -- the combine, Pro Days and individual team workouts are all in front of us -- but given Mayock's eye for talent, I wouldn't be surprised if McFadden pulled a "Brady Quinn" come draft day. And who knows, maybe Jerry Jones will get his (rumored) wish after all.

By the way, Kiper currently has McFadden No. 1 on his big board.

Hat tip: Pancake Blocks