Brian Murphy: There’s nothing neutral about the NFL’s crusade for cash

When it comes to unabashed greed, and I mean high-level, stomp-over-your-grandmother-to-scoop-up-a-nickel greed, you must genuflect to the all-time champion of cash crusading and corporate bootlicking – the National Football League.

Nolo contendere.

Roger Goodell and his yacht-rock cartel love money more than a shark loves blood. In 2010, the commissioner bragged to owners that the league would become a $25 billion industry by 2027. And they are well on their way to pay dirt, pushing 22 weekends of the purest drug of unscripted entertainment across the planet.

Not sure about you, but I take comfort in the NFL as a benevolent, unincorporated nonprofit 501(c)(6), out there doing so much good for all us sinners.

The 57th Super Bowl next month in Glendale, Ariz., will again feature two teams clashing on neutral ground for the sport’s ultimate prize. Record television ratings and advertising revenue will flow from the last vestige of appointment viewing in our fragmented culture.

But it’s not enough for Goodell and Co. Because it’s never enough.

If Joe Cool Burrow and his Cincinnati Bengals had not vanquished the favored Bills in snow-socked Buffalo last weekend, this Sunday’s AFC championship game against the Kansas City Chiefs would have been played in the sterile, indoor desert of Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta – a collective 1,700 miles from either competing city.

To be fair, the possibility existed because of the Week 17 cancellation of the Bills-Bengals game in Cincinnati, when Buffalo safety Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest and almost died on the field after making a tackle.

With Hamlin fighting for his life in the hospital, the NFL quickly carved out an exception in its rules to accommodate 16-game records for the Bengals and Bills, who were competing with the Chiefs for home-field advantage in the AFC playoffs.

The league already had sold 50,000 tickets for the potential game in Atlanta before Cincinnati daggered Buffalo 27-10 in the divisional round to ensure a trip to Kansas City.

“Better send those refunds,” Burrow quipped after the Bengals quarterback led Cincinnati into a conference title rematch with the Chiefs.

I have no doubt the NFL skimmed interest from those preliminary ticket sales, because you don’t get to $25 billion by leaving anything on the table.

Buffalo’s bellyflop lets the Chiefs play host to the Bengals at raucous Arrowhead Stadium, which they earned by posting the AFC’s best record.

Chiefs fans had better cherish their moment in that red cauldron of chaos. Same for boorish Eagles fans in hardscrabble Philadelphia. This weekend’s conference championships may be the last played with home-field advantage.

Hamlin’s life-threatening injury forced the NFL to consider a one-off neutral-site option. But it also accelerated a dry run for rotating its conference championships around the country like the College Football Playoff.

The league and its Park Avenue money changers would love to poach the games from home stadiums and loyal fans. To line their pockets with more lucrative sponsorship and naming rights deals. And reward their corporate and TV partners with access to suites and seats that undoubtedly will treat Joe and Jane Sixpack like the plebs they are.

As Albert Breer reports in MMQB, the NFL manages the conference championship games, unlike wild card and divisional contests, which the home teams administer. They control ticket sales, not the home club’s season-ticket holders and suite holders. They get to gouge prices and let their fat cats gorge.

How about the State Farm AFC Championship game? Or the NFC title game brought to you buy Verizon? K’ching! K’ching!

The NFL can bury their snouts deeper into the financial trough by auctioning the games to the highest bidders. If your hometown fails to secure a Super Bowl, try Door No. 2.

I have no doubt fans would pack U.S. Bank Stadium for a Chiefs-Bengals game no matter their rooting interests. Super Bowl lite would play just fine in other indoor palaces in Detroit, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Dallas or New Orleans.

SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles is begging for an annual NFL mutual admiration gathering. So is Miami, since the Dolphins are unlikely to play in a conference championship anytime soon.

If you build it up, they will come, because NFL fans always need their next fix, no matter how far they must travel, how much they need to spend or who they’re even cheering.

Home field advantage throughout the playoffs will become a relic like leather helmets, barefoot kickers and Daniel Snyder.

Fans of the top conference teams will be forced to choose between tailgating in their backyards or taking out a second mortgage to will their boys onto the Super Bowl.

Bow down in the $25 billion temple of greed and offer up cigars and monocles for the peddlers and pushers of The Shield.

They’ll make your world what you want it to be.