I've stopped watching the Sunday-nighter, the NBC game. Call it a protest, a lone wing nut on the corner holding up a runny sign. That's me. Once the network decides to pull its snarky little left-winger, Keith Olbermann, off the pregame and halftime segments, I'll tune in again.

You see, I don't mix the political stuff with football. Two very separate subjects. Olbermann's presence on the Sunday-night broadcast smashes that rule.

Yes, Keith does just fine on the show. He's fine at voicing the highlights and fine at handling the day-to-day football business they give him. An old pro.

But Olbermann also had these things to say recently, during his other job as host of "Countdown," his weeknight show that's also featured on the NBC family of networks (MSNBC).

On Republican congressman Joe Wilson (S.C.), on admitting he didn't know what the word dithering means: "Want to just stick to the monosyllable words there, Wile E. Coyote? Am I asking too much that Republican congressmen can show proof that they completed the sixth grade? Am I setting the bar too high somehow?"

On those anti-government health care Tea Party rallies: "Tea baggers," he calls the attendees. Go poke around the fraternity houses to find out what that one means. A juvenile reference to a strange sex act. Olbermann, our hard news man, our Sunday-night football source, knows that.

His latest attack on a 22-year-old former beauty contestant, a relative innocent: "With Maine disgustingly following California's lead in repealing same-sex marriage rights, it should have been a happy week for Carrie Prejean, the ex-Miss California and anti-gay civil rights icon."

And then, his recent spin on the Fort Hood slaughter by the disturbed army Major Nidal Hasan, a Muslim with confirmed radical leanings: "When Christian terrorists strike, or let's make that non-Muslim terrorists strike — the George Tiller assassination, any one of examples of guys walking into places and shooting people because they can't shoot the people on Bernard Goldberg's book list — there's much less of an emphasis, much less of a cause-and-effect quality to their devoutness or their specific beliefs — obviously."

And here's Olbermann attempting to educate us on what drove Hasan into his maniacal slaughter: "It's not a major league hate crime, but [Hasan] had a bumper sticker removed from his car that expresses his belief and his car gets keyed two weeks after he moves into his apartment. That's harassment. That's a religious hate crime."

Let's see — Hasan butchered 13 U.S. soldiers and wounded 30 more and Olbermann is giving us bumper stickers and door scratches?  Meanwhile what about the church full of teary-faced army families out there, the ones dealing with funeral arrangements and calls from the hospital and what-happened-to-daddy talks? Tell me, at this point does anybody really give a damn about the sick Major's run of car trouble? Olbermann apparently does.

And yet on Sunday night, the network and the NFL want me to brush all that trash aside as I stare at that same leftist mug, and listen to that same snarky voice, as Olbermann slips on his sports face and tells us about Brady-to-Moss and asks, "What's wrong with the Giants?" Forget it.

Agree with his politics or not, it's powder keg stuff that Olbermann spews on "Countdown." The kind of charged jawboning that lends to clenched fists and angry voices and the curtain being torn in two.

Olbermann is a leftist, a mega one … über-socialist and a politico correcto. He's openly anti-Republican and loathes anything stamped conservative. It's no camera act.

The point is that a heckuva lot of conservatives and Republicans also watch pro football, and they can't stomach the Olbermann sneers and ratty little smirks, but NBC doesn't seem to care about that, because they run his big mouth out there every weekend and let him play Mr. "Football Night in America" — all reporter-like and neutral and surely non-sided.

Once upon a time ESPN ran Limbaugh the Conservative off its pregame show because he said they [the media, league] were overblowing Donovan McNabb's talents due to his race. True or not, the comment didn't belong on pregame, and once he said it everyone knew that Rush was toast. Bad for business. Or maybe good for business, but bad for the agenda.

I think the word Goodell used to describe Limbaugh was "divisive" — his corporation doesn't like divisive, and Rush certainly is that. Yet so is Olbermann.

Anyway, I heard NBC's Dallas-Philly game was a pretty good one. I heard the two teams knocked the heck out of each other, and the Monday papers said it ended up 20-16 on the Dallas side.

But I don't dip politics in my football, you see. NBC does. So until they decide to yank Olbermann off their Sunday football show — sorry peacocks, I won't be watching.

There's someone in your lineup playing way out of position.