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Yahoo! The Jaguars, Bills are going to start Internet football

in Sports/Top Headlines by

Good news, everybody.

Blake Bortles is on the Internet! Download him today!

And he’s facing E.J. Manuel in a battle for bandwidth and the pride of England.

Yahoo!

This is a good thing, I think. The NFL and Yahoo have announced a partnership that will bring a football game between the Jacksonville Jaguars (tally-ho) and Buffalo Bills (carry on) to the Internet. That means that if you happen to be weary of playing Candy Crush for a morning, there will be a game on. Sort of.

Direct-TV will not show the game in its NFL package. It will be on television, however, in the Buffalo and Jacksonville markets.

But if you’re in Utah, and you want to see if Rex Ryan is creating an international incident, you will probably be among the dozens watching the game on your laptop.

Last year, the Bills were 9-7. The Jags were 3-13. Do you think the London fans will notice that this isn’t exactly the Patriots and the Seahawks we’re sending them?

You know what this means, right? For the first time, fans will watch the game on a complex operating system; only the team they are watching will  not have.

Facebook? Or run-in-place book?

Look, there have been years that the Bucs were the football export of the United States, so the chuckles may sound familiar. But the Internet? Will you have to decide to “like” the game when it’s over?

Ah, but football fans in London evidently want the NFL in the worst way. And after we’ve taken James Bond and the Beatles and Shakespeare and Robin Hood and King Arthur and Sherlock Holmes and the rubber band and the mousetrap from them, what else could we give them but…the Jags, the guys who have won 14 games over the last four seasons.

At 9:30 a.m.

On the Internet.

Against the Bills.

Yikes.

Buffalo hasn’t made the playoffs since 1999. Jacksonville hasn’t made them since 2007. Last year, the Jags were the lowest- scoring team in the NFL. Jacksonville was last in the NFL in offense last year. Buffalo was 29th in defense. Can you wait?

Now, Yahoo says it is doing this to expand its Internet video presence. Who knows? If it does well, maybe it can show the big Chiefs-Lions game a week later.

Gary Shelton is one of the most recognized and honored sportswriters in the history of the state. He has won the APSE's national columnist of the year twice and finished in the top 10 eight times. He was named the Florida Sportswriter of the Year six times. Gary joined SaintPetersBlog in the spring, helping to bring a sports presence to the website. Over his time in sports writing, Gary has covered 29 Super Bowls, 10 Olympics, Final Fours, Masters, Wimbledons and college national championships. He was there when the Bucs won a Super Bowl, when the Lightning won a Stanley Cup and when the Rays went to a World Series. He has seen Florida, FSU and Miami all win national championships, and he covered Bear Bryant, Bobby Bowden and Don Shula along the way. He and his wife Janet have four children: Eric, Kevin, K.C. and Tori. To contact, visit [email protected]

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