McManus, president of CBS News and Sports, gave one of the more thoughtful and nuanced answers to the question of why in a time of audience splintering and ratings erosion for many televised events, audiences tuned to NFL games in record numbers.

"I have not seen any research that says more people are staying home on Sunday afternoon because of the economy," McManus said during a conference call this week. "I guess you could probably infer some of that, but I would point much less to the economy and more to the exciting story lines that NFL football had this year. If you use that (economy) argument ratings across the board, particularly in prime time, would be rising to the same extent. And though we are doing really well in prime time on CBS, other networks aren't doing very well."

In the regular season, the average NFL game was seen by 16.6 million viewers, 2 million more viewers per game than last season and the highest viewership since 1990.

Fox, NBC, ESPN and the NFL Network each had its most-watched NFL season ever, while CBS had its best since 1993.

The NFC Championship on Fox was the most-watched title game since 1982. The AFC Championship on CBS was the most-watched AFC title game since 1986.

"No. 1, (there was) the Brett Favre factor, which last year we were the beneficiaries of when he played for the Jets," McManus said. "That story did not last through the playoffs. This year the Brett Favre story built and built and built. . . . 

"The excitement that was generated by Brett Favre or Peyton Manning or the New Orleans Saints or the Dallas Cowboys or a rookie phenom quarterback with the Jets, a team the coach said was not going to make the playoffs and all of a sudden they were in the playoffs - I can give you 10 other examples. There were so many good story lines during the regular season, it just fed upon itself. . . . It's really a case of momentum. Once you start rolling in September, and people get increasingly more interested each week, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy."

McManus also points to the high and sustained interest in the NFC East race and the AFC playoff race, which kept so many teams alive until the end of the regular season.

"I think the NFC East was such a good story this year," McManus said. "All four teams were in it for a fair part of the season. . . . 

"There were so many teams, particularly in the AFC, so many teams were in it really up until the last weekend."

McManus said NFL football fits with what many people look for in television entertainment.

"The game of football just seems to get more and more attractive and more and more popular every single year," he said. "Part of it is the limited number of games they play.

"There is something about NFL football when some people have less time to go out of their homes, some people have less money to go out of their homes, some people have more obligations to stay home, it just seems to be the No. 1 attraction. If they are going to watch something on television during the week, they are going to watch NFL football."

Even with a myriad attractive NFL packages - the NFL Network's RedZone channel received high praise this season - McManus argues that watching games on television has no substitute.

"The viewing experience of watching the football game on television is so far superior, I think, to even the Red Zone package or anything you could do on the Internet," McManus said. "I'm not objective about this, but the best television property in the world is NFL football on any given weekend."

It's no coincidence CBS and NBC, which at different times lost the rights to NFL broadcasts, later reacquired them.

McManus said, "I will also say it's increasingly more difficult to be a broadcast network without NFL football. When we lost NFL football, our prime-time ratings weren't as good as they could have been. When we got NFL football back, (CBS President and CEO) Leslie Moonves and the CBS television network used the promotional power of NFL football to launch shows like . . . 'CSI' and 'NCIS' and all the shows that are still popular on CBS."