Back in the 1970s, CBS was the carrier of NFC games, which made its affiliates in Texas the home for Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys. NBC had the rights to AFC games, meaning its Lone Star stations got to show Bum Phillips and the Houston Oilers during their Luv Ya Blue days.

Twice a year, when an NFC team played in Houston, CBS stations were forced to carry the Oilers game. If Dallas happened to be scheduled to play at the same time as Houston, which happened on occasion, Cowboys fans were out of luck.

It was the same deal in reverse, whenever an AFC team played in Dallas. NBC affiliates were required to show the Cowboys instead of the Oilers.

Anytime the situation occurred, there was grumbling from fans of both sides. Oilers fans, however, having been used to second class treatment and mostly bad teams with Bud Adams in charge of the franchise, seldom got too bent out of shape.

Matter of fact, until Bum Phillips came along, Oilers games rarely sold out in time for the TV blackout to be lifted. So there was a history of Houston home games not being televised in Southeast Texas.

Dallas, however, was another matter. The Cowboys were far more popular statewide and always sold out at home. Their much bigger fan base had come to accept it as sort of a birthright to watch ALL of Dallas’ games on TV.

Consequently those fans — I used to call them Cowboy freaks — did not take it well on the rare instances when the their favorite team was bumped by the Oilers. There were almost always nasty scenes, with station managers and switchboard operators at CBS affiliates taking considerable verbal abuse.

The worst instance of Cowboy fan backlash transpired in San Antonio in the late 1970s. A group of fans became so irate over not being able to see Dallas’ game they threatened to detonate a bomb inside the offending station.

It didn’t happen, but you can imagine how uneasy that station’s employees must have been for a while.

Now lets fast forward to 2007. The 10-1 Cowboys meet 10-1 Green Bay Thursday night in one of the biggest NFL regular season games in years. Yet a very limited number of fans — those with access to the NFL Network — will be able to view the game on home television.

Unless you’ve been trapped at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico in a diving bell, you know the reason why. Big cable — read that Time Warner, Cablevision and Comcast — have not rolled over and accepted the NFL’s terms for carrying the NFL Network.

The big loser in all this, naturally, is the fan. In the Golden Triangle, Time Warner customers are scrambling for a place to watch Thursday night’s fireworks.

My physician, Dr. William George, and his wife, Mary Jean, are driving to Houston to watch the game with a daughter who has DirecTV. David Stout, who lives in Silsbee, told me he’ll be headed to the home of a brother who has Dish Network. Others will line up early to get into sports bars.

Up to this point, I’m not aware of anybody threatening to blow up Time Warner’s offices in Southeast Texas. Maybe, because of all the outsourcing, they are not sure who or where to call.

Anyway, the point everybody needs to understand is that Time Warner is no more a villain in this unfortunate situation than the NFL. Actually, it’s not even 50-50. The bottom line here is that Cowboys-Packers will have a limited audience primarily because of NFL greed.