Sports on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is the one day a year when being a couch potato is high art.
Other days of the year, couch potatoes are lazy and loathsome creatures (I know firsthand how it feels to be persecuted for enjoying a good movie on a beautiful Saturday afternoon).
But on Thanksgiving, stuffing your gut full of food and laying around like a beached whale is admirable. And, boy, did I reach for the summit yesterday.
It was a particularly appealing proposition because yesterday's Thanksgiving programming included 10 straight hours of marquee sporting events.
Well, sort of.
The early-afternoon football game featured the Lions hosting the Falcons. The late-afternoon football game featured the Cowboys and the Broncos. And the piece de resistance nightcap was on the hardcourt, with the Cavaliers in a nationally-televised game at Indiana.
Unfortunately, the watchability of the games varied. Below, I assign grades to the viewing experience yesterday's Thanksgiving sports selection gave me.
And, yes, the final one is a bit subjective. Just a bit.

12:30 p.m. ET
NFL -- Atlanta at Detroit: D
Why doesn't the NFL spread these Thanksgiving games around? Why do they subject us to watching the Lions, year after year?
I realize the Lions were 9-5 in their previous 14 Thanksgiving games heading into yesterday. But these 2005 Lions don't have Barry Sanders. Or a quarterback. Or much of anything, for that matter.
The Falcons came in and did what you'd expect a playoff contender to do to a perennial dreg: stomped them flat, 27-7.
And it wasn't even that close.
Joey Harrington was really, really bad (6-of-13 passing, 61 yards, 1 INT). He was so bad, Lions coach Steve Mariucci couldn't resist his itchy trigger finger and pulled Harrington in the second quarter for Jeff Garcia. Garcia fared little better, and the Lions stayed off the scoreboard until the fourth quarter when the game had been decided.
Third-string Detroit quarterback Dan Orlovsky relieved Garcia and and coughed up the ball with 15 seconds to play.
This game should have been buried deep on the Sunday slate with 10 percent of the country tuning in, not on national television with every male-dominated TV set in America tuned in.

4 p.m. ET
NFL -- Denver at Dallas: A
Everything that the Lions and Falcons couldn't deliver, the Broncos and Cowboys did. Two conference contenders in a hotly-contested game that went into overtime. Denver won, 24-21.
This game should have aired first while dinner was still in the oven. Instead, it aired just in time for moms across the Eastern time zone to say "Turn that TV off. Dinner's ready."
While you were eating, Ron Dayne was reclaiming his career. The Heisman Trophy winner was stuck with an underachiever stigma during his lackluster stay with the Giants. Now a member of the Broncos, he used a chest injury to starting running back Tatum Bell to his advantage, piling up 98 yards rushing, including a 55-yard run on the second play of overtime that set up Jason Elam's game-winning field goal.
The surprising Broncos improved to 9-2, winners of four straight.

8 p.m. ET
NBA -- Cleveland at Indiana: C
If you are a Pacers fan, this was a beautiful game and worthy of an "A". But I'm not.
The Pacers ... well ... paced the game. Using a stifling defense featuring Ron Artest, Indiana held LeBron James to four first-half points en route to a comfortable 98-76 win.
The Pacers were at their fundamental best at the defensive end, clogging passing lanes, closing quickly on the Cavs' open shots, harrassing Cleveland into poor shot selection, and all the while taking methodical and well-selected jump shots on the offensive end, making many of them.
The Pacers survived early foul trouble for Scot Pollard and Jermaine O'Neal, and showed how deep and solid their bench is.
The Cavs are a good team, but they have yet to arrive in the elite class occupied by Indiana, Detroit and San Antonio. I used much of the second half for post-turkey dozing off.