I think otherwise. Maybe that was true years ago when TV was crappy and you had to bang on the TV and bend a coat hanger to get the signal to come in halfway decent. Even with a decent signal, you had to deal with cheesy graphics and second-rate audio. Check out these highlights from a 1978 game and you get the picture of how awful it was. And this was a playoff game!
In recent years, the technological advances in televising football are simply astonishing. You are practically part of the action on the field now and soon you will have ability to control your own camera angles and rewind and replay whatever angle you choose. Then you have add-ons like the NFL Redzone experience - that allow you to automatically switch to games when a scoring opportunity presents itself. I saw this feature at my brother-in-laws house and words cannot describe how awesome that was. If I wasn't cutting my cable, I'd be signed up for it already. (BTW, I would pay $25 a game as a pay-per-view.)
People are giving up season tickets because the best seat in the house is now in their own living rooms. So you see, the very business model of televised football would change if it was no longer offered for free (along with that incessant barrage of obnoxious commercials).
I do think enough people would pay $25/game to not only make it feasible but to earn the NFL and networks even more revenues than they ever made before.
And yes, they could do it without commercials.
Sure, you would initially get a lot of outraged fans who would vow to never watch another game again. But slowly, they will come around and decide that $25/$50 for an afternoon of football is not such a bad deal after all. Especially when you can invite your friends over to split the cost and take advantage of all the technology you will have at your fingertips (ability to control camera angles with unlimited replays.)
If it were that strong a business opportunity I think the NFL would have done it by now. One big flaw I see in that model is that some games will generate hardly any revenue at all. Who — including die-hard fans of the teams themselves — would pay $25 to see a game between the Cleveland Browns and the Carolina Panthers?
Pay-per-view is more likely to take hold in a sport that simply doesn't have much appeal to casual viewers. The NHL would probably be ideal for it, since it is much more of a "cult" sport than a "popular" sport.