If football teams followed the same rules as network television, the New England Patriots would be the team of the decade.

Like the Pats, the TV conglomerates only give you their best for two months out of the season. For the rest of the year, the TV schedule, like every Patriots running back since Mosi Tatupu, drops the ball.

In November and February, NBC, CBS and the rest pull out all the trick plays - throwing downfield without fear and only occasionally handing the ball to Lamont Warren for a two-yard loss. For the rest of the season, it's nothing but interceptions, broken plays and shows starring spunky blondes working at a magazine.

The November sweeps are now officially over and the television networks will put away their million dollar prizes, "very special episodes" and miniseries co-starring Whoopi Goldberg. Instead of heavily promoted overblown crap like "Y2K: The Movie," the coming of December means a prime time return to the regular crap we've all become custom to ignoring.

That means CBS can send all those women triumphing over incredible odds on vacation and Fox can let the police go back to chases which occur at sensible speeds. ABC gets to lock Regis in his box, let Barbara Walters stop pestering Monica Lewinsky and, most importantly, put "Sports Night" back on the schedule.

With sweeps behind us NBC's leprechauns can return to starring in fourth rate horror films, and the "Friends" can stop getting married to each other - for at least a few episodes.

The end of November even means changes at the WB, though most folks would hard-pressed to distinguish a "special" episode of "Felicity" from a regular one. Apparently, it has something to do with the markings on her belly, but only a trained Televentoligist can tell for sure.

Sweeps or no sweeps, I'm unable to name a single program on UPN except for "Moesha" and "WWF Smackdown." I'm pretty sure neither one of these shows did anything particularly special for November, which explains why no one watches the station. Had they just done a crossover episode, perhaps pitting Moesha against Mankind in a cage match, I'm sure UPN would be crack the top five in no time.

The entire concept of sweeps makes less sense than the Reform Party platform. The networks pick two months - during which they show nothing but specials - to set advertising rates based on how many people are watching their regular programs.

That's like a mall using the week before Christmas to decide how busy an average week will be, or the police using St. Patrick's Day as their standard for how many drunk driving arrests will occur on any given day. Of course more people watch in November and February - the networks do everything short of kidnapping your children to make you tune in.

It's now two months until the next sweeps period begins. That means a long winter full of repeats, tele-movies starring Tori Spelling and a seemingly endless supply of new episodes of "Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place."