On the other hand, the cable carriers' indifference to the demands of serious sports fans has pushed the sports streaming environment to the point where it's often significantly better than what's available on cable.

I care about sports. I'm willing to pay to watch them. I'm willing to pay extra to watch them in high quality. And in particular, I'm willing to pay extra to watch my favorite teams.

In terms of cable choices, I have a glut of options: AT&T, Comcast, and Astound all serve my apartment (though I can't use a satellite dish). I picked the company with the best sports options. And even so, and even when I pay extra for the NHL package or the MLB package, most games are only available in low-def. There is no amount of money I can pay any cable company that will ensure I can watch the Red Sox in HD (on those rare occasions that they're still playing when I get home from work.) So instead of paying the cable company, I pay for the online streaming service, which is almost, but not quite, HD quality.

The funny thing is, I never seriously considered cutting the cord before, but now that my TV setup is streaming-centric (with both a Chromecast and a PS3, since not all of the services I want are available on either device), it's much easier to imagine getting all of my content over the internet.

You're spot on. Sports are the single thing that there really is no easy way to watch without traditional cable/satellite.

Once they finally come around, it will be much easier to convince people to cut the cord.

MLB, NBA, and NHL all have streaming service for live games. They are still subject to blackouts though, which is crazy.

But the NFL, the big kahuna, does not. It really stinks; I'm going to have to figure something out come fall as I cut the cord a few months back.

I happen to have cable again because it was a very nominal increase over cable modem only and because I don't get a very good OTA signal from our apartment.

Prior to this move though, I'd done without cable for ~5 years. I got MLB and NHL direct from the league offerings, and as noted as long as you can get an antenna singal and are willing to go to a bar or a friends house for Monday or Thursday night games the NFL is relatively cordcutter friendly. I would _love_ to give the NFL money directly for something similar to MLB.tv, but don't see it happening anytime soon.

All your local team's games are going to be on free channels. Get a $8 rabbit ears antenna, or if you have a cable modem that provides internet only, get a splitter and plug the other end into TV (that you would normally plug into the cable box). The local free channels (NBC, CBS, FOX, ABC, etc) are going to be available, and that's enough for NFL. You're not going to be ESPN or NFL Network, but if it's your local team, the game will be on a local channel anyway.

This may have been the case at one time, but now the local channels are not available like that from Comcast. You need a cable box to get anything at all.

And many people live in areas that don't get over the air reception, at least not with any commonly available antenna.

Tell that to the mountain on my left.

NFL is one of the easier ones to go watch at a bar or restaurant because the games are weekly. Other sports with games on almost nightly are a lot harder to go out and watch.

Yeah, the blackout situation on MLB.tv is ludicrous. Living in the home television market of my chosen team, why would I pay to be blacked out on half the games?