Last night’s Redskins game in Baltimore got me thinking about big screens. The Ravens stadium has an amazing hi-def video system; FedExField has perhaps the worst viewing options for fans in American professional sports.

The antique and analog Jumbotrons at each end of Dan Snyder‘s stadium are tagged as either “minitrons” or “Lite Brites” by angry posters on Snyder’s message board, extremeskins.com.

I’ve been asking the Redskins for years why the team doesn’t answer the pleas of the fans and get a new big screen. Snyder spokesman Karl Swanson has insisted, again and again, that the reason they keep the old crappy video system is because “the stadium isn’t wired for digital.”

I’m no Thomas Edison, but Swanson’s excuse seemed like hokum from the start. My house was built in 1925, and the wiring in some parts of it is still original. But I’ve got a digital TV from Costco that plugs in and works just fine. I always figured: Couldn’t the stadium just do that?

But, recent events at the stadium sure seem to prove that yes, the Redskins could go digital just like me if they wanted to: Paul McCartney brought in his own high-def jumbotrons and ran them during his show at FedEx, to the enjoyment of the tens of thousands of folks who were forced to pay Snyder’s sneaky $10-per-person parking charge. U2 will no doubt do the same next month.

So what’s the real reason there’s no good video at FedEx, Karl? We now know you read this blog. So tell us what the story behind the lack of a big screen TV is, and we’ll post it here. Unfiltered.

(I had to laugh when I saw that last night’s Skins broadcast had a sponsored segment called the “Samsung Hi-Def Play of the Game”!)