Time for football on the frozen tundras

Is football an inside game or an outside game? Is America a nation of wimps?

Just in time for Wild Card Weekend in the NFL, both those questions hang in the air like big, fat snowflakes. And the schedule isn't warming anybody up.

The football-schedule gods brought some actual logic to Saturday's lineup. The New Orleans Saints against the Seahawks in Seattle's open-air Qwest Field? Well, OK. Rain's about the worst that ever happens in Seattle. And the New York Jets facing the Indianapolis Colts at Lucas Oil Stadium indoors.

You know how rough those Indy winters are.

But then comes Sunday's locales. The Baltimore Colts and the Chiefs outdoors in Kansas City. Brrr! And the Green Bay Packers meeting the Philadelphia Eagles in Philly. Also outside. Also brrr!

And if that sounds dicey, next week's games - in Pittsburgh, New England, Atlanta and Chicago - make absolutely no sense at all. Only Atlanta has a domed stadium with a roof on it, the one city of the four that certainly needs it the least.

So should we just tough it out and sing the frigid praise of winters in Wisconsin and Illinois? Or should we admit the obvious: Football's a whole lot more comfortable when it isn't 20-below.

Put Ed Rendell in the tough-it-out camp. Just before New Year's, when the NFL moved the Eagles-Vikings from Sunday to Tuesday on a blizzard call, the Pennsylvanian was beside himself. "We've become a nation of wusses," he thundered. "It goes against everything that football is all about."

But a higher authority might also have weighed in.

Didn't heavy snow just cause a roof collapse at the Minneapolis Metrodome?

Was that a sign? Maybe God prefers outdoor games.

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