Belmont Stakes, NHL good but still short of NFL

A Triple Crown hopeful at the Belmont Stakes and a rescheduled hockey game in the Stanley Cup Finals carry NBC's hopes Saturday, and the network will do fine.

Heck, it'll do more than fine. It'll win the day -- or at least the late afternoon and early evening -- in terms of ratings and viewership.

Still, it seems like so much work. Network officials have to be counting down the 91 days until the NFL regular season begins.

It's all in the math. A contender for the Triple Crown at Belmont typically doubles ratings for the race, meaning maybe 16 million viewers. That was the case in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2008 -- with the high point in recent years 21.4 million for Smarty Jones' failed attempt in 2004.

At the same time, Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals in primetime two days ago, drew 4.7 million viewers. With the horse racing lead in -- NBC moved Saturday's game from NBC Sports Network to NBC to take advantage of the two-sport doubleheader -- the hockey game might get a slight bump from the horse race. Maybe. It's really not clear how many of those casual horse racing fans have an affinity for hockey.

So the two events might draw 20-some million viewers -- and NBC would probably be thrilled.

Keep in mind, though, that "Sunday Night Football" averaged 21.7 million viewers last season. Each of the three broadcast networks pulled more than 18 million viewers for their regular season NFL schedules. Trailing NBC were Fox (21.2 million) and CBS (18.7). ESPN averaged 13.7 million for "Monday Night Football."

Once post-season play began (and hockey and horse racing are clearly in their postseasons at this point), NFL numbers jumped to more than 34 million for wild-card games and then escalated exponentially on the way to the 111 million viewers for the Super Bowl.

The NFL is just that popular and powerful.

That's why the NFL's announcement of its Super Bowl 50 logo (and the fact that the league would use the number 50 as opposed to the Roman numeral L for the game) earlier this week got the kind of attention the horse racing and the NHL would like to attract.

It's an enticing twinbill Saturday, TV sports worth watching, and NBC will do it well. It just contributes to the sometimes obvious and sometimes subtle message that there's the NFL on TV … and then there's everything else.