Mark Madden: Steelers should fight neutral-site conference championships

The Pittsburgh Steelers must make sure the NFL doesn’t play its conference championship games at neutral sites. Because the NFL surely wants to.

The NFL mooted the concept because of the Damar Hamlin near-tragedy, which caused cancellation of the Week 17 game between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals.

Because that game’s result could have affected seeding and home field for the playoffs, the NFL acted fairly (or thinks it did) by scheduling a potential AFC championship game between the Bills and Kansas City Chiefs at Atlanta, a neutral site.

That game is a no-go after Cincinnati won Sunday at Buffalo.

But the idea of neutral-site conference championship games won’t go away. They’re another golden goose for the NFL.

A news release trumpeted how fast tickets were moving for the Atlanta game. (Cincinnati quarterback Joe Burrow: “Better send those refunds.” BIG POP.)

At a neutral site, the game belongs to the NFL. The NFL gets the revenue. All 32 teams get a cut.

Total revenue would be bigger because the NFL would take bids to host the games, like for the Super Bowl. Naming rights and sponsorships would go through the NFL, too. Ticket prices for these games would skyrocket.

The NFL could have conference championship games at the same stadium, one Saturday and one Sunday. That would produce a Final Four-type weekend feel. (But would a grass playing surface hold up for two games in two days?)

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The Steelers must rally teams to kibosh this because there never again would be an AFC championship game in Pittsburgh.

There might not be, anyway. That could happen organically. (Now you’re mad.)

If the NFL does neutral-site conference championships, all of them would be in domes, or in outdoor stadiums in cities where they don’t really have winter.

Neutral-site championship games would screw home markets and most of the ticket-buyers in those markets.

Not everybody can afford to travel to see a game. The Super Bowl is a rich fan’s game. That’s what the conference championships would become.

For the Atlanta game, 25,000 tickets were made available to Buffalo fans. But the Bills have 60,000 season-ticket holders.

Money that would be spent in the host city moves to the neutral site.

The atmosphere diminishes. A Super Bowl has never had the rabid setting of, say, a playoff game in Pittsburgh, let alone a conference championship game with a trip to the Super Bowl at stake.

The concept greatly dilutes the value of seeding. That home game to get to the Super Bowl is the pot of gold. It’s why you fight to have the best record in the conference.

It would take 24 NFL owners agreeing to make this idea happen.

The late Dan Rooney was excellent at manipulating things like this. Let’s see if Art Rooney II can do it. Here’s doubting it.

Greed is 100% the driving force behind the NFL, a league that bleats about player safety even as it keeps adding games to the schedule. (An 18th will be added sooner, not later.)

When it comes to quality of football, it’s hard to argue with playing conference championship games in a dome or in better weather. The elements are romanticized after the fact, like the “Ice Bowl” NFL championship game at Green Bay in 1967, but make the football worse and can make the result random.