League officials have described the playoff scheduling decision as fluid, with no set timetable for a decision. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue is expected to take as much as another week before announcing which plan the league will implement.

Tagliabue is believed to have no strong allegiance to any plan and will follow the wishes of a majority of the league's 31 NFL owners. If no consensus can be reached, look for the league to go with its original plan to shorten the playoff field from 12 to eight teams.

But while all options other than reducing the playoff field seem fraught with substantial logistical challenges, don't discount the financial implications of canceling the wild-card games.

The league estimates it would be forfeiting between $50 million and $60 million in TV income, gate receipts and ancilliary revenue by reducing its playoff field by one-third. Teams such as Green Bay, Denver and Philadelphia are said to be strongly against shrinking the playoff field and have spearheaded the drive to consider all available rescheduling options. Part of those teams' objections to an eight-team playoff field, a league source said, was to retain the integrity of a standard 12-team postseason.

Moving the Super Bowl back a week, while keeping it in New Orleans, probably is the most dubious of the longshot scenarios. On Jan. 28, the day after the Super Bowl, the National Automobile Dealers Association is scheduled to descend upon New Orleans for the week.

The gathering of car dealers requires more square footage of exhibit and convention space than even the Super Bowl itself, and includes guest speakers and cars that are coming from all parts of the world. To move the convention elsewhere at this point would represent a gargantuan task.

In a conference call last week to announce the league's cancellation of Week 2 games, Tagliabue dismissed moving the Super Bowl as a near impossibility. With that in mind, it would be hard to fathom the league taking the Super Bowl away from New Orleans, with the AFC and NFC championship games providing a replacement of sorts for the city. The promise of a future Super Bowl host assignment for the Big Easy also would no doubt be part of any inducement.

As for doubling up the schedule in the case of the playoff's first two rounds, on the surface it seems far-fetched. Eight of the league's most important games would be played in a six-day span -- the majority on weekdays no less -- with the winners having no more than four days between games.

But that scenario is probably the second-most likely outcome besides the temporary return to an eight-team playoff field.

As part of that decision, the NFL still hasn't determined whether there will be a Monday night game in the final week of regular-season play, on Jan. 7. Minnesota is scheduled to make up its lost Week 2 date at Baltimore, but the game could be played in prime time on Saturday Jan. 5 in an attempt to make sure no potential wild-card round qualifier would be faced with playing two games in a four-day span.

Under the doubling-up scenario, the league also is expected to schedule as many as half its games on Saturday Jan. 5, in order to give potential wild-card participants as much time as possible to recover before the playoffs open. Such Saturday games would also placate some of the concerns of the TV networks.

 

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