NFL Week 1 TV Schedule: President Obama's Speech Will Affect NFL Kickoff Night

The National Football League is one of the most powerful forces in the United States. However, it's not quite powerful enough to overrule the most powerful man in the world.

That would be, of course, President Barack Obama.

He has a speech planned for Thursday night, and it must be aired on national television. That means Thursday night's regular-season opener between the New Orleans Saints and Green Bay Packers must step aside.

But don't worry, the game itself shouldn't be affected.

What will be affected, according to a press release, is the pregame coverage. NBC was supposed to start broadcasting NFL Kickoff 2011 at 7:00 p.m. ET, but the network is going to switch to cover Obama's speech live.

If you must see the pregame festivities, which will feature music acts like Kid Rock and Lady Antebellum, the good news is you can switch over to any one of five cable networks: Versus, USA, Syfy, G4 and, of course, the NFL Network.

The game itself is due to start at 8:30 p.m., and Obama's speech is not supposed to run that long. When the game starts, NBC will be there to show it.

So all things considered, the only football fans that are going to be missing out on Thursday night are those who insist on watching the pregame coverage but don't have cable.

In other words, no football fans are going to be missing out.

I could be wrong, but either way, I hope there's nobody out there that is actually annoyed by all of this. As much as all of us love the NFL, it would be pretty damn depressing if the NFL had enough influence to bump the leader of the free world to cable just so it could broadcast its pointless pregame coverage.

If our culture ever gets to the point where that's the norm, I'm not going to want to live on this planet anymore.