So we’re listening to Man-Girl & Meatball in the Morning and they’re trying to suggest that the NFL left the New England Patriots off the Week One slate of prime time games because of the lingering questions involving Spygate, I and/or II.

Both of them seem to be convinced that the move was the sole result of the issue that so many in the media seem to be hoping will become a huge story.

While they might be right (after all, there’s a first time for everything), we think that the omission has more to do with the fact that no team can appear in prime time more than six times in a single season.  Why burn one of the appearances in Week One, when we’ll all flock to watch a Packers team without Brett Favre play a Vikings teams with Brooks Bollinger, and then we’ll chase it with three hours of Broncos-Raiders?

So there’s simply no reason to waste an appearance in prime time from teams like the Patriots or the Cowboys (the two biggest regular-season draws in 2007) during the first week of the season, when (as we all proved last year) we’d even watch the 49ers and the Cardinals, a game that generated only one real highlight.