Trying to understand all that goes into deciding how this new NFL "flex" schedule works to benefit the TV coverage of the league as the season moves on may has well be explained to the masses by some monkey flexing in a mirror to amuse himself.
Better yet, here's NBC Sports chief Dick Ebersol, telling a bunch of reporters how he became giddy by the fact that he discovered Tuesday morning his network has swiped the Nov. 12 New York Giants-Chicago Bears contest for a 5:15 p.m. prime-time showing (after it was originally set for 10 a.m. on Fox from Giants Stadium):

"The league makes the final decision ... and said there doesn't seem to be any reason whatsoever not to go ahead and announce this a week earlier. There are going to be some weeks where we're going to want to hold all the way down to the 12-day margin on at least a few of these games when you're trying to figure out which of the games will have the most impact on the playoffs, have the most impact on fans across the country. In this case, the undefeated Bears vs. the NFC leading Giants, it seemed to be just a natural to go ahead, and follow their lead when they asked this morning if they could announce it at the start of their owners meeting this morning in New Orleans.

"The league put this policy into effect when they negotiated the television deals with CBS and Fox in the fall of 2004. Our deal wasn't made until April of '05 so we inherited flex scheduling. We're able to say to the league, 'here is a game that we would like to have, and here are reasons why we think this the most compelling game.' And then their television department and the commissioner make the final decision.

"The league did protect one game for us for each week of flex. The game was never formally announced; it couldn't be protected by the other networks. That's never been announced and the NFL asked us never to confirm what those games are. I will say that it's comforting some weeks to know there's a game, no matter what, if we want it, it's ours.

"There may be a week where we want 'X' game and there may be another game that the league rules equally or more compelling and they'll make the determination that that is the game that we're going to do. They have the final authority.

"All this stuff that gets written sort of makes it seem like this was come up with on the fly. This goes back to the negotiations they had with those two companies [Fox and CBS] back in the fall of 2004. They knew what they were buying into. Flex was created to make sure that there was the strongest possible primetime attraction, so you wouldn't end up with the kind of situation ... where the back end of the schedule was loaded with mismatches between teams whose hopes had fallen during the season. They were no longer playoff contenders and the games just did not look like the merited being on in primetime on a network. Flex was conceived by the NFL so if a team is really making an impact that wasn't expected, they may be able to play themselves onto the broadcast primetime package."

Oh, now we see. And thanks for allowing us to go ahead and plan our evening for Nov. 12.