Here’s some good news for football fans — Comcast and the NFL Network finally resolved their three-year-long squabble Tuesday, settling on a deal to show the network to an additional 8 million viewers nationwide by Aug. 1.

For years, the NFL Network has been available to Comcast subscribers only on a more expensive sports package. But under the deal, the network will be included with Digital Classic (called Digital Preferred for new customers), which is the mid-tier — one step up from the most basic digital — package which reaches two-thirds of Comcast’s digital subscribers. In other words, if you’re a Comcast customer with digital cable, you’ll probably get NFL Network now.

You’ll also get NFL highlights and replays On Demand, and — here’s a biggie — access to upgrade to the Red Zone Channel when it becomes available to cable outlets, no later than 2012. The Red Zone is a neat little package DirecTV offers with its Sunday Ticket; it bounces from game to game with live look-ins whenever a team is in the “red zone,” about to score. So theoretically you can watch all the day’s highlights as they happen, skipping all the boring stuff. I haven’t seen it in person, but it sounds insanely cool, especially for fantasy football geeks.

The NFL Network is pretty addictive. I had it for a month for free when I first got digital cable before Comcast got wise and shut it off. But I was hooked. (Not hooked enough to pay an extra $8 a month, but…) Besides the eight regular-season games the network carries, there’s a smorgasborg of highlights, analysis, replays of classic games and a seemingly never-ending stream of NFL Films goodies.

It’s a shame it took so long for regular cable customers to get all this, but better late than never.