Earlier this month, WMB and WoW both reported on NFL restrictions that prohibited churches from showing the Super Bowl on big-screen TVs. In a letter to Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, a vocal critic of the policy, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote that the league would no longer object to churches showing the Super Bowl — regardless of screen size — as long as no admission is charged and the event is held at a place the church uses on a “routine and customary” basis. “[The NFL has] decided to set aside profit for community spirit,” Pastor Steve Holley of Immanuel Bible Church in Springfield, Va., told The Washington Post. “I’m encouraged by that.”

At the close of yesterday’s Super Bowl, American church auditoriums were among the few places deader than the New England Patriots’ bench. For the past two years, party-pooper NFL attorneys have worked to clamp down on unauthorized screenings of the game in public. Ironically, thanks to copyright law, the more churches upsize to vogue JumboTrons and giant flat-screen TVs, the fewer will be using their newfound devices for Super Bowl parties.

The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal both reported on the NFL’s blockade in the lead-up to yesterday’s game. “The league bans public exhibitions of its games on TV sets or screens larger than 55 inches because smaller sets limit the audience size,” the Post said. “The section of federal copyright law giving the NFL protection over the content of its programming exempts sports bars, NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said.”

Officially, a church violates the NFL’s rules if it does, inter alia, any of the following: (1) charges admission, which violates copyright law; (2) screens the game on any TV or projector of more than 55 inches, or on any two TVs or projectors, period; (3) promotes any kind of message; or (4) uses the words “Super Bowl” to advertise the event, which violates trademark law. (Churches bent on circumventing the latter have called events “Superb Owl” parties.)

McCarthy told the Post that public places like auditoriums and movie theaters are prohibited from showing NFL games because big-screen events “could eat into television ratings and erode broadcasters’ advertising rates.”

But bars and restaurants that typically run sports programming on their TVs got an exemption years ago. Critics don’t see why they are special. Yesterday Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican from Pennsylvania, told CNN’s “Late Edition” that he sees “absolutely no reason why you ought to be able to have a big screen in a bar but not in church, where a church is having a social event.” Rep. Heath Shuler, a Democrat from North Carolina and a former Washington Redskin, pressed NFL commissioner Roger Goodell directly for an exemption. Last year, when the debate began after the NFL preempted a party at Fall Creek Baptist Church in Indianapolis, Ind., for about 400 churchgoers, lefty MSNBC talk-show host Keith Olbermann even gave the “No Fun League” a silver “Worst Person in the World” medal.

A year ago, the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina decided to take a hard line on churches that either affirm or endorse homosexual behavior. And at the convention’s meeting in Greensboro today, Myers Park Baptist Church of Charlotte became the first church to be expelled under the rule by an overwhelming vote of the nearly 3,000 delegates in attendance. It should be noted that Myers Park Baptist, a member of the state convention since 1943, has not sent any representatives to the annual convention in the past eight years and only contributed $250 to the organization last year. The church was not under investigation by the convention, and its violation of the new rule was brought to the convention’s attention by leaders from Myers Park Baptist. “[Myers Park] has chosen to exclude itself from fellowship,” Allan Blume, president of the convention’s board of directors, told the gathering.