NFL on NBC plays the ‘Law and Order: SVU’ theme song during challenges now and it’s very confusing

I sat on my couch Thursday night like any good American: Watching football and eating way too many of these great chocolate wafer cookies I discovered last week and am now addicted to. The Seahawks looked like those neon green worms from James and the Giant Peach as they battled the Jeff Fisher-less Rams. The game started out slow, but then Pete Carroll challenged a spot, and I froze, wafer cookie halfway to my mouth.

I recognized the music, you see. It was a Pavlovian response — my body tensed up, my head tilted, and I realized I was expecting something dramatic to happen, like huge title cards popping up on the screen announcing the location of the game and the local time. Why? What was that tune? Where had I heard that before?

All of a sudden, it dawned on me.

“Is that ... are they playing ... the theme song from Law and Order: SVU?” I said out loud to no one, chocolate now melted all over my hand.

They were. NBC appears to have started playing the theme from SVU whenever a coach challenges a play. This song, the one that plays during the credits before Olivia Benson and company confidently stride onto the scene of a murder and solve the whole dang thing in a neat 45 minutes:

I was able to figure this out so quickly because a) I am brilliant and b) one spring break in high school I stayed in the basement and watched four seasons in a row (it was a dark time). Apparently the show is still on television because, like Grey’s Anatomy, some series just don’t know when to hang up their cleats. Elliot Stabler isn’t on the show anymore and Taylor Swift named her stupid cat after Benson so it’s probably all garbage now, anyway.

But I digress: The point is that other people watching football seemed as confused online as I was:

At first I was like “WTF, man?” But after thinking about it for way too long last night and most of today, I have to hand it to NBC: This is some ingenious shit. The sound people are like cooks in the school cafeteria who take the leftover meat sauce from Thursday and turn it into sloppy joes on Friday. I don’t know why they’re doing this, but you know what? I’m here for it. It keeps us on our toes. It makes challenges *~*~*mysterious*~*~*.

That said, here are some suggestions for TV themes they can play when other football-y stuff happens:

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got. Happy Friday.