Presence of unbeaten Pats all but guarantees huge viewership

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From some perspectives, Super Bowl XLII doesn't seem like must-see TV.

There's a dreadful lack of geographic diversity. The NFL championship game is being played in Glendale, Ariz., but the playoffs eliminated every team west of New Jersey. That begs the question: Will an all-Northeast matchup play in Peoria, Ill.? Or in California?

Stew Milne/US PresswireThis dynamic duo (well, half of it is dynamic, anyway) makes people want to watch the Patriots.

That regular-season finale against New York, in which the Patriots completed the first undefeated regular season since 1972, was simulcast on three networks on a Saturday night and drew the biggest audience for a regular-season NFL game (34.5 million viewers) since the Kansas City Chiefs played the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day in 1995. The Nov. 4 Colts game attracted the most viewership for a regular-season Sunday afternoon game (33.8 million) since records were first kept in 1987.

"The Patriots are not just chasing the Giants, they're chasing history," wrote Robert Seidman on the Web site TVbytheNumbers.com, which tracks and analyzes Nielsen ratings. "With Golden Boy Tom Brady and the villainous Bill Belichick in pursuit of 19-0, it's easy to predict record-high viewership for this year's Super Bowl."

Seidman predicts Super Bowl XLII will not only top the mark set in 1996, but exceed 100 million. Spokesmen for the NFL and Nielsen declined to speculate on the record being broken.

The total Super Bowl audience could have edged even higher if the Green Bay Packers had defeated the Giants in the NFC championship game and made it to Arizona, Seidman believes, because of the Packers' national following and the Brett Favre factor.

"People know him and like him," Seidman said in an interview. "I don't think that's true of [Giants quarterback] Eli Manning."

On the other hand, Nielsen spokesman Jack Loftus said, "If you've got every TV household in the No. 1 market [New York] watching that game, that's pretty significant."

The NFC championship game did add an alluring story line, as the Giants had to upset tough opponents on the road in Dallas and Green Bay to fight their way to Glendale. In addition, that frosty game, played in sub-zero temperatures, brought huge Nielsen ratings -- 10 percent higher than those of last year's NFC title contest between Chicago and the New Orleans Saints -- further pointing to the potential for a mega-audience for Super Bowl XLII.

But in the end, the quality of this Super Bowl will be crucial to the size of the audience, said Neal Pilson, former president of CBS Sports and now a broadcast consultant. The Patriots' mystique can attract casual viewers, but a good contest is required to retain them. Along with some great commercials, of course.

"If it's a blowout, it doesn't matter who's playing," he said.

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