I don't agree with any of the scheduling discussions that are going on.
The league has absolutely had a team that had a game Sunday night play on Saturday in the playoffs, so don't make any assumptions there. (In fact, it happened at 4:30 PM ET, January 8, 2011, when we played the Saints at home, on a Saturday, after playing the Rams in a flex game Sunday night to determine who won the West.)
Also, it's very typical for there to be a late afternoon and a night game Saturday, and a morning and an afternoon game Sunday i.e. there's a reasonable chance that we don't have to play at 10 AM.
Take a look at this story from 2012 (i.e. last year) all times Eastern:
Cincinnati Bengals (9-7) at Houston Texans (10-6) Saturday, 4:30 p.m., Reliant Stadium, NBC (WRC-4)
Detroit Lions (10-6) at New Orleans Saints (13-3) Saturday, 8 p.m., Superdome, NBC (WRC-4)
Atlanta Falcons (10-6) at New York Giants (9-7) Sunday, 1 p.m., MetLife Stadium, FOX (WTTG-5)
Pittsburgh Steelers (12-4) at Denver Broncos (8-8) Sunday, 4:30 p.m., Mile High Stadium, CBS (WUSA-9)
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012 ... ton-texansBasically there isn't a terrible amount of consistency but three of these four games occurred at times that are NOT 10 AM Pacific.
Some people are talking about "early" and "late" games Saturday and Sunday as if each of the early games are at 10 AM Pacific. They aren't, or more accurately, only one of them is.
Now, all that said, it is pretty typical for the NFC to have one early game and one late game, and it's also true that they won't start a game at 10 AM local time. If SF has the 3 seed in the NFC, they could play Saturday in either time slot, or Sunday late, but not Sunday morning. If the powers that be put SF in the Saturday night slot, we'd probably end up playing Sunday morning.
Another data point. My understanding is that CBS and FOX each pick one game they want (AFC and NFC respectively), and that NBC gets the other two. CBS and FOX televise on Sunday, and NBC televises on Saturday. That's the way it worked last year. Ah, here we go:
http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2013-nf ... -schedule/says we have NBC, NBC on Saturday, and the networks swap for Sunday i.e. last year was FOX then CBS, this year is CBS then FOX.
I could go all over the place depending on if SF or GB make it as the 3 seed, and who is in as the four seed. If it's Washington, I would be pretty sure that FOX wants that game, and so that's the "late" Sunday game (actually Sunday afternoon). If it's Dallas, well, hell, I'd suspect FOX would want that game too. Hmmm. Seems to me that an earlier poster is probably right... if we end up the five seed, we'll probably play on FOX on Sunday afternoon.