I just began reading "Breaks of the Game" by the late, great David Halberstam. Tell me if this excerpt doesn't remind you of hockey's tenuous relationship with NBC (particularly a certain Sabres-Rangers playoff game that was booted to Versus for horse racing). In this case, Halberstam is discussing the fact that CBS cut away to a golf event immediately after the Portland Trail Blazers won an NBA championship:

" ... Many of them turned off. Many others called CBS to complain irately over the injustice. It was, they knew, a decision which would never had been made at the end of a baseball World Series or a football Super Bowl, where the fans' right to see their winners was inalienable. The decision of CBS to cut away was a reminder that for all of its artistic beauty and its high salaries, and the fact that it might employ the most truly brilliant and complete athletes than any other sport, professional basketball had not entered the national psyche or become part of the national myth. It remained, the grace and skill of its athletes notwithstanding, a sport of some isolated urban areas and some rural areas struggling for national acceptance."

- page 17, "The Breaks of the Game" by David Halberstam.

Hmmm ... sounds familiar, doesn't it?