When the NFL released the now semi-infamous email on Jan. 20 that touted a neutral site AFC championship game with “EXTRAORDINARY DEMAND” and “MORE THAN 50,000 TICKETS SOLD IN ONE DAY,” the educated inference was simple.

This is a league that loves to chase money and create tentpole events. Suddenly it looked like the conference title games were being inched toward the auction block.

Almost instantly, the idea caught seemingly endless sharp elbows from fans on social media, not to mention getting panned by a few prominent voices across the league, including Pittsburgh Steelers team president Art Rooney II, Kansas City Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt and San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan. That was followed by some mild pushback from NFL executive vice president for communications Jeff Miller on Tuesday, who said he wasn’t aware of any conversations about converting conference title games into neutral site affairs.

“We haven’t had a conversation, that at least I’m aware of, about neutral site games,” Miller said. “If the ownership wanted to pursue that, I think that they would. There certainly is plenty of time to talk about that in the future. It’s not a new notion, as I understand it having come up many years ago. … But in the wake of that decision [to potentially move the AFC title game this year] we haven’t had a conversation about making future neutral site games, scheduling anything or making any decision around those.”

That’s not exactly a slammed door on the idea.