“Whatever can go to New York, will,’’ wrote the late, great Jim Murray. “Whatever can’t will go to Philadelphia.’’

Jim must be smiling up there, laughing if you will, gleeful about his prescience.

Gleeful he won’t have to cover Super Bowl XLVIII, the one scheduled for February 2014, the one in New York.

Not that most of America, or most of the world, is overly concerned about time and place for the annual championship game of the National Football League.

There has been ice hockey outdoors in Boston and Chicago on New Year’s Day. Those in attendance couldn’t have been any colder than they might be for a Super Bowl in New York.

Besides, in the taverns or the living rooms where the great majority of people watch, it will be plenty warm.

New York was a given. All the elements were there, even the outside elements that were ignored. A new stadium – in New Jersey, but we don’t fret the details – which cost around $1.6 billion. A chance to draw attention to the league for something more than Ben Roethlisberger’s indiscretions. More publicity than ever seemed possible.

Early returns have been predictable. The New York papers, which never can be accused of subtlety, acted without restraint.

We know that to those in Gotham, every place else is no place. You’ve seen that famous Steinberg cover drawing from the New Yorker, in which everything west of the Hudson River is pictured as wasteland, albeit the Meadowlands Stadium indeed is west of the Hudson.

The New York Post cleverly had the Statue of Liberty raising both arms, signaling a touchdown.

Maybe she should have been wearing ear muffs and a parka, but there’s no guarantee the temperature will be below 32 degrees three and a half years from now. Of course there’s no guarantee it won’t.

Didn’t the Packers and Cowboys meet in what was labeled the Ice Bowl? Didn’t the Bengals beat the poor San Diego Chargers for the 1981 AFC title in a wind chill of minus 59? Those games weren’t Super Bowls, but they weren’t very far away in importance or scheduling.

What I’m thinking about is a New York Giants game a few years back when the stadium hadn’t been cleaned after a storm and the fans hurled snowballs with abandon. Still, that isn’t going happen when tickets are $800 apiece.

Writers complain. Writers always complain. Players play. Maybe weather becomes the determining factor. Maybe it doesn’t. The better team invariably wins, rain, snow or the gloom of night.

Anyway, the worse the conditions, the better the TV ratings. Does anyone ever turn off a game when the field is a sheet of white and people are whiffing punts? It becomes one of those, “Hey, Martha, you gotta see this,’’ moments.

The commish, Roger Goodell, remarked that he wanted the owners, considering whether to have the first outdoor Super Bowl in a northern city, “to think outside the box.’’ Easy for him to say. He and the owners will be inside their boxes, the luxury kind.

Although Goodell is not afraid of a little inclement weather. When for the first time in any Super Bowl there was rain, at Miami in February 2007 for the game between the Colts and the Bears, he stood in the downpour during the trophy presentation without even an umbrella.

The main worry for this one is about travel between Manhattan, where the bars, restaurants and action are, and Jersey, where the game itself will take place. But the teams will be bivouacked out by the stadium, the fans will take their $500 a day hotel rooms in the city and only the journalists will be inconvenienced.

As if the public cares a whit about those who get free tickets and free reign.

Greg Cote of the Miami Herald, under the headline “NFL Goes insane With Super Bowl in New Jersey,’’ grumbled “The League should be arrested for prostitution because, in effect, the NFL has broken its own rules on mild-climate cities to reward the Jets and Giants for building a $1.6 billion stadium.’’

Houston was rewarded with a Super Bowl for building a new stadium. Rules about mild-climate cities? Detroit has had two Super Bowls; Minnesota, the frozen north had one. Those games were indoors, but for that first time in Detroit, XVI, the winning 49ers had to stomp through snowdrifts just to get to the Pontiac Silverdome.

The owners, who voted for New York, merely were supporting the free-spending decision of their pals in charge of the Giants and Jets to erect a new facility.

That’s not prostitution. That’s billion-dollar back-scratching.