Is This the Year the NFL Bubble Bursts? And Other Crucial Questions About Super Bowl XLIX

How big?

How big can the NFL grow? How many? How much? How large? How far? How often?

How many?

Last year, Super Bowl XLIX, a game that was basically over after the Denver Broncos’ first snap, drew 112.2 million viewers. That figure fails to include the countless throngs who viewed the contest at sports bars nationwide, but so what? Even without those eyeballs factored in, Seattle Seahawks 43, Denver Broncos 8 became the most watched event in the history of United States television. Of course, one wonders what the other two-thirds of America was doing that night. Clearly, the NFL still has work to do.

How much?

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell earns $43 million per year, which is not bad for someone who cannot even go toe-to-toe with a TMZ reporter in a league-orchestrated press conference. NBC, which will televise Sunday’s game (6:30 p.m. kickoff EST), is charging $4.5 million per 30-second spot. As of Thursday night, the cheapest—cheapest—tickets on StubHub for this contest between the New England Patriots and defending champion Seahawks were on sale for $9,205. Only 20 tickets were available for less than $10,000.

How large?

In Super Bowl I, which at the time it was played (January 15, 1967) was not yet known by that name, the largest player on either the Green Bay Packers or Kansas City Chiefs weighed 260 pounds, In 1970, the NFL had one 300-pound player. In 1980, it had three. Currently, there are more than 500 300-pounders in the NFL, and all but one of the offensive line starters on the Pats and Seahawks are listed at above 300 pounds. The lone exception? Seattle’s J.R. Sweezy, who is listed at 298 which, at that size, is just the difference of being weighed before or after his fourth meal of the day.

How far?

Beginning in 2007, the NFL began staging an annual regular-season contest in London’s Wembley Stadium. From one game per annum the first six years, to a pair in 2012, to three per year the past two years (and a trio planned for 2015), the league is definitely attempting to establish a cleat-hold in the United Kingdom as a first step in a potential European expansion. Think of Wembley Stadium, which has consistently drawn 83,000 per game, as Normandy Beach and Goodell as General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The University of Phoenix Stadium, where the Super Bowl XLIX will be held on Sunday, is seen next to a canal in Glendale, Arizona January 29, 2015. Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

“[NFL expansion in Europe] is not something that I think is 15 or 20 years away,” Goodell told the NFL Network last July. “It could be five or 10 years away.”

Which means that, to borrow from gridiron parlance, the league is already game-planning that move.

How often?

The NFL can now be watched from 1 p.m. Eastern time straight through to almost midnight every Sunday. Add a weekly London game that could kick off at 9:30 a.m. Thursday night football became a weekly staple on CBS this season, much to the chagrin of players and coaches who wonder aloud how playing two games in 96 hours squares with the league’s player-safety initiatives.

This season the New Orleans Saints played on Sunday night (on NBC) and then on Thursday night (on CBS). “Do you think it’s fair to play a night game and then turn around and travel and play on a Thursday?” asked Saints offensive tackle Zach Strief, who suffered a back injury in the latter game. “Being conscious of player safety, why would you do that?”

On Friday morning on CNBC, Joe Kernan asked NFL Media Executive Vice President Brian Rolapp if the next step is NFL on Wednesday nights. “The reality,” replied Rolapp, a rising young star in the league’s hierarchy, “is that you can only play football once a week.”

Oh?

The NFL would still prefer to expand to an 18-game season, while the National Football League Players Association is entrenched against it.

More consumers. More money. More adipose tissue (and more related injuries). More markets. More avenues of consumption. The NFL isn’t a sports league; it’s a fast-food franchise.

How much larger, in every sense of the word, can the NFL grow? Watching New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a man who perhaps aspires to be this country’s next president, hugging Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones as if he were an 8-year-old in his feety pajamas three weeks ago during a divisional playoff game, should have alerted you to two things: (1) the NFL’s capacity to evoke visceral reactions in Americans of all ages, tax brackets and ethnic backgrounds is unrivaled not just by any current sport, but by any contemporary religion and (2) because of No. 1, there are no current limits, domestically, to the league’s power.

Recording artist Katy Perry throws a football during the Super Bowl XLIX halftime show press conference.Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Katy Perry, who has more Twitter followers than anyone (64.2 million….here, then, is the true Miss Universe) on the planet, will perform at halftime. And yet it is a measure of the league’s insuperable popularity that it was a matter of contention as to whether Ms. Perry would pay the league for the privilege of performing this gig (Do you ever feel like a plastic bag...?). Perry has vowed that she did not pay the league for this marketing opportunity.

How much bigger? I ask this question because, while there are currently no chinks in the league’s armor that anyone seriously cares to address (as long as players continue to grow bigger and faster while wearing helmets, assertions such as the one that Rolapp made on Friday that the league “will continue to do its best to address player safety” are ridiculous; also, note how quickly “unnecessary roughness” flags are thrown when the victims are quarterbacks such as Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers as opposed to infantry types on the lines; the league will tell you that is because quarterbacks are unprotected, but it’s every bit as much about how they are its marquee stars. If you think Seattle running back Marshawn Lynch, whose punishing “Beast Mode” runs are predicated on him using his helmet and shoulder pads as battering rams, is laconic now, try talking to him after his 40th birthday....But I digress. The law of gravity states that what goes up, must come down.

Our Favorite Marshawn Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Empires fall. Ask any Caesar. I am writing this in my hometown, Phoenix, where a decade ago folks who earned $45,000 a year were buying homes that cost at least 10 times that because, well, the prices of homes never fall, do they? Phoenix is/was the epicenter of the subprime mortgage housing crisis. Only four years ago, two-thirds of all home mortgages in the Valley of the Sun were underwater, meaning that the cost of the mortgage was of more value than the market price of the home. Some 250,000 homes in this, the nation’s sixth-largest city have fallen more than 50 percent below their peak market value of just five years earlier.

And while a housing market is not identical to a pro sports league, there are enough similarities to warrant a question: Is this, a year in which game tickets are going for the price of a car (you do realize you can watch on television for free, and the beer will be cheaper and colder?), in which home viewers will probably see about 12 to 15 minutes of action over a four-plus hour telecast—and just as much time will be spent deliberating whether that was a fumble or if the ball broke the plane—and in which parking at University of Phoenix Stadium will cost $100 a car…is this the year in which the bubble finally bursts? Is this the year, to use a popular refrain you’ve heard on Sundays all year, after which we all finally say, “No more?”

Or is this just another year in which the answer to that question is, “No!More!”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to this year's game as Super Bowl XLVII. It is Super Bowl XLIX.