It’s so much easier now to watch an out-of-town team than it used to be.  With the proliferation of sports television packages, numerous NYC bars now cater to fans of another city’s sports teams or a specific out-of-town professional or college team.  One site that I’ve used recently to find out-of-town friendly sports bars is http://barhappy.com/new-york-city, which gives you the ability to filter your bar search by specific sports teams.

With the NFL playoffs about to begin, I’m thinking about sports bars.  Over the next several weekends, sports bars in NYC and around the country will be packed with fans.  Of course, there are numerous sports bars all around the five boroughs and I won’t commence a top-10 list or any reviews today (though an NYC sports bar crawl could be interesting, maybe one for each borough).  Just a question/wonderment.  Prior to the television sports packages and satellite television, what was the sports bar experience like?  Was it just a place for locals to gather once or twice per week and watch the home team (aside from places with close proximity to sports venues)?  Surely, no bar prior to television sports packages and satellite television would have a dozen TVs in the establishment.  Three, maybe four TVs, at the most?  If you can provide any insight or thoughts on this, please do here.  I look forward to hearing from you!

Best wishes for 2012.  I look forward to more NYC pub crawls and bar visits in the new year.  And I will keep this space updated accordingly.