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Deflate-gate: Another fumble, but NFL, Inc. keeps scoring

Call it the Teflon sport. A football season that began with a horribly botched investigation of spousal abuse is now ending with allegations of cheating. Yes, “Deflate-gate.”

But let's not forget -- this isn't just a sport, it's a business.  The NFL earned $1 billion last season and that number is expected to grow this year. Despite long-term concerns over players' health and more than a handful of public relations fumbles, Americans still love their football.

“Obviously, the country likes a winner more than a villain. Or they like a villain to be a winner,” says Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Michael Santoli. “And that is what football has become.”

According to Nielsen, 49.8 million viewers tuned into Fox for the NFC championship game last Sunday, while 42.1 million watched the less exciting AFC Championship. Those numbers will likely double for next week's Super Bowl.

“They get away with it as long as obviously the TV money flows. And the TV money flows as long as the people are watching. And the ratings have held up really well,” said Santoli.

Earlier this week, CBS renewed its Thursday night football partnership in a deal valued at an estimated $300 million, up from $275 million last year. That’s despite the fact that many of the games were blowouts and ratings were lower than many analysts and advertisers had expected.

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It's not just people watching at home either. Game attendance was up about 2% at stadiums and the average ticket prices increased 3.5%. That's according to Team Marketing Report.

And NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell's super-sized paychecks keep clearing. Goodell, who took over as NFL commissioner in 2006, earned $105 million from the 2008 through 2012 seasons. In 2013, he made more than $44 million.

In September, Goodell came under fire when a video surfaced that showed Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee in the face. Goodell, the NFL and Baltimore Ravens were highly criticized over the handling of it, and the NFL initially handed out a relatively light punishment to Rice: a two-game suspension. It was later extended after public outcry. Rice was reinstated after an appeal, but no other NFL team picked him up. And the controversy disappeared as the season went on.

“We were talking about 'Is Goodell going to have a job in another week?' half a season ago. And now it’s kind of like victory lap time even though it’s not in the kind of warm and fuzzy way that the NFL would like you to have them portrayed,” said Santoli.

What does this say about corporate public relations? “Trying to put forward a friendly, kind of good guy image is probably over-valued in corporate America right now," says Santoli. "It doesn’t mean they are going to stop any companies from doing that because in Super Bowl ads you are going to see exactly that. You’re not going to see kind of trash-talking, bad-boy behavior.”

The price tag for Super Bowl advertising this year is $4.5 million for 30 seconds, and NBC says more than 95% of the ad space has been sold out. This year will see the largest number of first-time advertisers since the height of the dot-com boom in 2000. A pretty good investment. Last year, 111.5 million viewers tuned into the Super Bowl.

“You have got some overconfidence or at least some high confidence in corporate America with a lot of tech and consumer companies thinking this is our one chance to make a splash," says Santoli.  "It's one show in the entire year on television that we know a humongous audience is going to be watching.”

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