Technology is amazing.

It’s hard to imagine years ago that there would ever be a channel that would offer fans a steady diet of football on television running 24-hours a day.

I mean come on. The thought of turning on the television at any hour of the day and being able to get caught up on all things related to the NFL is an idea that to start with is just sheer genius.

To make things even better, imagine being able to click on the television at any hour of the day and watch highlights of any NFL game played in a given week, without having to worry about a charge to your credit card. All the nonsense would be edited out, and anything that happened during the game can be rewound, paused, all by the touch of a button.

Well fans it’s here, courtesy of Comcast Digital Cable and the NFL Network.

After hearing commercials over the past week that at some point on my digital cable box I would find this feature, I had been monitoring my Cable Box menu to the point where I’ve actually worn some of the lettering off of the “On Demand� button on my remote. Finally late Monday night unlimited access to free highlights On Demand from Comcast for the 2004 regular season appeared, and I eagerly clicked the enter button.

It’s amazing. Nearly every game was available, short of the Monday night game that had ended less than an hour earlier.

I obviously selected the Colts at Patriots game that was played last Thursday as my “Test Game�, and as it began playing I was even more surprised.

As the game began the audio accompanying these hightlights was that of Gil Santos and Gino Cappelletti. To sweeten the deal, the league had eliminated every timeout, break in action, along with focusing on the major drives of the game that involved any type of scoring.

Now before you get too excited, Comcast isn’t exactly offering a complete free rebroadcast of the game. Instead they’re offering an extensive highlights package that involved nearly 13-minutes of footage from last Thursday night’s game. Not a bad deal for a feature that comes included with the standard digital cable package.

The highlights included every scoring drive, every major play. It was all there.

Miss something? Don’t worry. Hit the left arrow and rewind it. Watch it a hundred times if you want, it doesn’t matter. It’s free.

I felt as though I was stealing. After all, I can now sit here and watch highlights from a recent Patriots victory at my convenience anytime I want to, for free.

It's hard for me to believe, but hey, I’m going with it.

After watching nearly the entire feature, it wraps up as I listened to Gil call the play as Mike Vanderjagt’s field goal sailed wide right, sealing the win for the Patriots.

I thought to myself life can’t get any better.

I rewound it and watched Willie McGinest sack Colts QB Peyton Manning on 3rd down which helped lead to the Indianapolis’ kicker’s miss one more time.

Why? Because I could.

Now I’m off to watch New England’s next opponent, Arizona, who lost to St. Louis on Sunday, and I probably won’t stop there.

After all, the team has 15 games left and as a fan it’s my duty to be ready. Thanks to Comcast, now Patriots fans can be.

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