'OH, wert thou in the cauld blast?' is a refrain that will increasingly be answered in the negative by the footballing public carrying home widescreen televisions this Yuletide.

For scarcely had the ink dried on the recent television deal with the Scottish Premier League, incurring some predictable initial euphoria, than the reality dawned that it was like handing over the therapeutic massage of a sickly patient to the Boston Strangler.

Viewing the St Johnstone-Aberdeen game, in its almost post-apocalyptic atmosphere, and incorporating every available mode of comfort, like a softly-cushioned divan, a Speyside malt and an HD television, the experience painfully, and guiltily, reminded me that home comforts could yet be the ruination of the game.

To witness what ought to be one of our main fixtures, Hibernian against Rangers, last Saturday, turned into a moribund affair barely attracting 12,000 sends a chill up the spine.

A recession; a product constantly and unflatteringly compared to the stream of games from England and Spain; kick-off times that have an almost Alice in Wonderland appeal to them; a largely inclement winter climate; and now loony legislation which means you could be lifted for humming something in a football ground that does not conform to the purity of Songs of Praise. How many more inducements can there be to keep the great footballing public indoors and away from a sport that desperately needs its human dimension?

At some point in the 1960s, the late Sir Robert Kelly, then Celtic chairman, looked me in the eye and said that television would destroy football. He was thereafter regarded in the broadcasting world as a Jeremiah, unable to see the benefits this powerful medium would bestow. Posterity might see him now as having the wisdom of Solomon.

For in the years of fighting the cause for televised football, as I certainly did, it never occurred to anybody around me that we were engaged in a process that could possibly produce fatalities. But then the termite, munching blithely away at the foundation of a house, does not appreciate that its voracious appetite can produce the condemned building.

For although television's encroachment on football during the period of Sir Robert's office was modest by today's standards, it was never a static situation. It wanted more and got it, as he had predicted.

Towards the end of the 1970s the sole objective of television executives became the pursuit of live coverage at the expense of anything else. The highlights tradition served by both Sportscene and Scotsport was considered fit only for those who still thought Muffin the Mule was visceral drama. For the health of our national sport this was an historic mistake.

Of course the blunt facts are stated that without a television deal Scottish football would wither and die anyway. The £65m deal here, with 30 live matches to be shown, seems like manna from heaven to clubs who are barely keeping their heads above water. But it is almost a Faustian deal with the soul of the game, the patrons who used to turn up for a 3pm start of a Saturday, every week for every club, wholly sacrificed. Is any institution, anywhere in society, wholly durable when it is held constantly to ransom? Punters, staying away from matches, even at Celtic Park and Ibrox, are beginning to feel they are part of a bum's rush.

For our environment is entirely different from other countries and demands a different analysis of cause and effect. In Germany the Bundesliga recorded the highest average attendance per game, 42,000, last season despite the fact that they are greatly exposed to television coverage. But with a population of 80 million their model is sustainable. In the south, as another example, the recent four-year study of the Premiership by Alex Cox of the University of Portsmouth's Business School reached a startling conclusion which could not possibly apply here. He states, " . . . the evidence suggests all three parties – fans, broadcasters and clubs – would be better off if the number of Premiership matches shown on television was increased". This is based on the statistics he examined that top clubs would lose £50,080 per live game, lower ones, £169,839 on attendance figures but each on average gain £4.1m per match through television rights.

SKY and ESPN, while covering the games admirably, have come north with that similar business mindset that, somehow, with a much cheaper deal, Scottish football can withstand the same amount of exposure on the box, even though it is clear they are depopulating the stands.

The obvious solution, of course, would be to return to square one; slash the number of live matches, hold fast to the cherished 3pm start on a Saturday every week and for television to return to the tried-and-trusted tradition of the highlights programme at peak viewing times and not, as Sportscene is now, shunted off into what used to be the God slot. That should be our sustainable model. And while it might be ridiculed in many quarters as the musings of a hopeless romantic, it is made as a rebut to witnessing Scottish football continually treated by television now with no more respect than truck-pulling on ice.