Watching National Football League football is something to look forward to. Sundays are synonomous with a game that features intense action, big hits and thrills.

Oh, and did I mention Ray Romano?

Watching the Browns play the Buccaneers on Sunday proved to be an exercise in futility, and not just because the Browns seemed to forget they had a game to play.

The most frustrating aspect of the game was the amount of commercials that were featured during the game. Now, I know that sports is about money, and the topic of commercialism in sports has been covered in just about every aspect. Further, I accept the continual television time outs that occur after about every time that the game is stopped.

What is most irritating is the fact that networks that cover the games feel the need to promote their television programming during the broadcasts themselves. Commercials for shows like “Everybody Loves Raymond” occur not only during commercial breaks, but also in between plays. This leads to veteran broadcasters like Dick Enberg spending almost as much time shilling “Survivor” as they do dissecting a touchdown pass. That’s not right.

This combination of ads has diluted the networks’ presentation of the sport. A person could watch a whole game and not remember the score, but they may remember what the episode of “Becker” was about, without even watching the show.

These networks pay hundreds of millions of dollars to show these games every Sunday. It wouldn’t hurt if they spent a little bit more time talking about what they paid for, instead of talking about Ted Danson’s new girlfriend.

Football games should be filled with expert analysis on zone defenses and star players, instead of being platforms to push bad sitcoms. We watch football for football after all, not for previews.

When a game starts, I expect the announcers to talk about nothing but football, and the cameras to show nothing but what’s going on inside the stadium. Networks can advertise their awful shows all they want during commercial breaks, but once the game is on, that’s where the focus should be.

After yesterday’s game, I almost felt compelled to watch “Miracle on 34th Street” just to clear my head of commercialism. Hey, maybe Kris Kringle can’t save televised sports, but I bet he could provide better blocking on the Browns offensive line.