I watched Monday Night Football, and I’m offended and outraged. My sensibilities, poor delicate things that they are, have been damaged beyond repair, and my children have doubtless been launched down the path to depravity, wickedness, sin and degradation.

But it wasn’t because of that opening segment with Nicolette Sheridan and Terrell Owens. It was the hypocritical response of the NFL and ABC to the reaction to that steamy little house ad for “Desperate Housewives” that has my knickers in a knot.

ABC issued an apology Tuesday for the skit whose climax, as it were, featured Sheridan, clad only in a smile, leaping on Owens, prompting him to decide that maybe the opening kickoff could wait.

“We have heard from many of our viewers about last night’s MNF opening segment and we agree that the placement was inappropriate,” ABC said in a statement. “We apologize.”

Excuse me while I vomit. The statement suggests that the wizards who decided it would be great fun to have a naked woman approach a player much like a randy dog approaches your leg had no idea that anyone in America would be offended.

From that, we’re to believe that ABC was watching “Trading Spaces” reruns when a second or two of Janet Jackson’s bizarrely bedizened nipple ignited an inferno of indignation at the Super Bowl last February.

We all know what happened after that little episode. CBS dominated the news for weeks afterward. And what really had to hack off that network’s executives was that they weren’t promoting one of their own shows when Jackson’s wardrobe malfunctioned.

My guess is that ABC wrote the apology even before it filmed the spot and figured that all the publicity it would reap for its new show would be well worth any fines the FCC might decide to impose. They were right. The spot itself was seen by maybe 20 percent of the country. The replays and pious diatribes against it are seeping into every nook and cranny of the country, and every story mentions “Desperate Housewives.” You can’t buy that kind of publicity.

If you want to talk about declining morals, that’s where you start, with the cynical hypocrisy of the executives who knew exactly what they were doing. Their apology is as sincere as that of a man who hits another over the head with a two-by-four then visits him in the hospital to say, “I didn’t know it would hurt.”

Then there’s the NFL, which called the spot “inappropriate and unsuitable for our ‘Monday Night Football’ audience. While ABC may have gained attention for one of its other shows, the NFL and its fans lost.”

Lost? Lost what? Their glasses? Their car keys?

Don’t tell me they're innocent. We didn’t see any of Sheridan’s personal highlights. You have to go to the Internet to see those. We didn’t see anything other than some heavy flirting and then a really tight embrace. And if a kid learned that men and women are attracted to one another from the ad, so what?

Remember, this is the same NFL that gladly puts its imprimatur on video games in which those same innocents get extra points and boundless amusement by kicking and stomping on their foes and dancing and strutting and posing after every good play. Stomping on fallen opponents is good and Nicolette Sheridan in a towel is bad. That’s the NFL’s line, and they’re sticking to it.

For Aiello to say the NFL and its fans lost anything by that little skit is beyond hypocrisy. Monday Night Football has been experiencing a ratings sag over the years. All this did was convince more people that they better check out the intro next week, just in case ABC has another “lapse” in judgment – or has another show it’s desperate to promote.

The NFL was glad to take more than a billion dollars from Fox and CBS for a new television contract, knowing full well that the networks do not recover the rights fees with advertising sales. To the networks, buying the NFL is buying advertising time on their own stations. They don’t carry the NFL to turn a profit on football, but to sell their other shows and turn a profit on them.

ABC carries the NFL precisely to advertise such shows as “Desperate Housewives.” The NFL knows that. If the league doesn’t want these sorts of things to happen, it would refuse to sell its product for more money than its worth.

If the league cared about the morals of our youth, it would refuse to have any part of money generated by ads whose selling points are getting drunk, driving fast, chasing people of the opposite gender and taking pills to cure all your ills. And it wouldn’t sell video games that give extra points for sadistic violence.

But it doesn’t do any of those things, because there’s billions of dollars involved, and ABC does what it does for the same reason.

Admit it, and I won’t object to anything you do. And if you don’t admit it, spare me the apologies and the press releases saying how shocked you are. Nudity I can deal with. Lies and hypocrisy is where I start to have problems. And right now, I have problems.

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