Next Thursday night at Gillette Stadium, when the defending Super Bowl champions open the 2015 season against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Patriots fans will have every right to cheer and holler and scream and shout, and to do so for as long as they’d like.
Memo to NBC: Let Patriots fans have this moment, and carry every second of it.
In real time.
And don’t you dare cut to a commercial while the Patriots are unfurling their Super Bowl banner, for the simple reason that these people, these fans who have been royally screwed over by the National Football League, are the consumers who buy your advertisers’ products.