Yes, it is annoying that so much of the sports are now on channels that are not over the air. But to me it is not much different than when I was a kid and most of the sports weren't televised at all. You'd get a couple of football games on the weekend, but not all of them. Some random basketball and baseball. The big golf tournaments, some bowling maybe, a hockey game and pro wrestling once a week. Maybe Wide World of Sports. Cruddy, advertised-filled partial coverage of major worldwide events like Olympics and tennis and World Cup finals. And that was it.
Then ESPN came along and I learned that I like watching Australian Rules Football, college volleyball, sumo, and world's strongest man. THEN they came up with NHL center ice and the other premium sports packages, and I really got spoiled.
But guess what? Some of the time the local game I want to watch is still over the air on a local affiliate. Big big games are still mostly over the air. Yay, hello couch, cheap beer, and homemade popcorn! I can always go out to watch a game that I really, really want to see that's only on a pay station, but that only comes up a few times a year, and the Mexican restaurant by my house has $1-2 beers and much nicer TV's anyway. What I mostly miss is the Olympic sports, and reruns of world's strongest man, of course. To me those are not worth $1000+ per year.