More chilling of free speech? - ABC's Monday Night Football Problem or Good PR?

Well Red States, this is the America that you voted for. Now you've got it, they are taking away your right to see hot girls and football together. Last night, ABC ran a promotion for its Desperate Housewives show at the beginning of Monday Night Football. For those of you who missed it, here's how it went "down" according to AP:

The spot showed Owens and Sheridan in an empty locker room, with Sheridan wearing only a towel and provocatively asking Owens to skip the game for her.

After she dropped her towel, he smiled, agreed to be late for the games and she jumped into his arms. Sheridan was shown only from behind and above the waist after she dropped the towel.

Then the shot panned out to two more stars of "Desperate Housewives," Teri Hatcher and Felicity Huffman, watching the scene unfold on a television and commenting on desperate women.

The NFL's response:

ABC's opening was inappropriate and unsuitable for our Monday Night Football audience. While ABC may have gained attention for one of its other shows, the NFL and its fans lost.

Okay, did I miss something? Seriously - what did I miss? This is the same NFL who will happily take billions from ABC with money earned from Coors ads with The Twins?

There is an alternative read on this, however, from Mike Cleizic at NBC Sports:

I watched Monday Night Football, and I'm offended and outraged. My sensibilities, poor delicate things that they are, have been damaged beyond repair, and my children have doubtless been launched down the path to depravity, wickedness, sin and degradation.

But it wasn't because of that opening segment with Nicolette Sheridan and Terrell Owens. It was the hypocritical response of the NFL and ABC to the reaction to that steamy little house ad for "Desperate Housewives" that has my knickers in a knot.
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"We have heard from many of our viewers about last night's MNF opening segment and we agree that the placement was inappropriate," ABC said in a statement. "We apologize."

Excuse me while I vomit. The statement suggests that the wizards who decided it would be great fun to have a naked woman approach a player much like a randy dog approaches your leg had no idea that anyone in America would be offended.
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My guess is that ABC wrote the apology even before it filmed the spot and figured that all the publicity it would reap for its new show would be well worth any fines the FCC might decide to impose. They were right. The spot itself was seen by maybe 20 percent of the country. The replays and pious diatribes against it are seeping into every nook and cranny of the country, and every story mentions "Desperate Housewives." You can't buy that kind of publicity.
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The NFL was glad to take more than a billion dollars from Fox and CBS for a new television contract, knowing full well that the networks do not recover the rights fees with advertising sales. To the networks, buying the NFL is buying advertising time on their own stations. They don't carry the NFL to turn a profit on football, but to sell their other shows and turn a profit on them.
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If the league cared about the morals of our youth, it would refuse to have any part of money generated by ads whose selling points are getting drunk, driving fast, chasing people of the opposite gender and taking pills to cure all your ills. And it wouldn't sell video games that give extra points for sadistic violence.

But it doesn't do any of those things, because there's billions of dollars involved, and ABC does what it does for the same reason.

So, good PR or the chilling of free speech? You decide. Either way, hot chicks and football evidently are no longer part of George Bush's America. If THAT isn't the end of Western Civilization as we know it I don't know what is.