Ask Farmer: Now there’s only two NFL games on TV Sunday in L.A. instead of three?

Have a question about the NFL? Ask Times NFL writer Sam Farmer, and he will answer as many as he can online and in the Sunday editions of the newspaper throughout the season. Email questions to: sam.farmer@latimes.com

Now that the Rams are in town, are we not going to get NFL doubleheaders on CBS? Both the Raiders and Chargers are playing, but there’s no afternoon game other than Seattle-Los Angeles. What’s up?

Jack Ramsdell, Los Angeles

Farmer: Let’s start with the basics. CBS and Fox broadcast the Sunday day games. Depending on the week, one of those networks gets a single game and the other gets a doubleheader.

If the Rams are at home, and not on the network broadcasting the doubleheader that week, Los Angeles will get two games, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. The rationale is the NFL doesn’t want to pull viewers away from the Rams by putting a different game on the other network. Therefore, while the Rams are on Fox, L.A. won’t get Falcons-Raiders on CBS as the Bay Area will, or Jaguars-Chargers as San Diego will. The NFL will make an exception, though, if the Rams are playing a home game on the network that has the doubleheader that week. If that’s the case, then L.A. will get three games on that particular Sunday.

If the Rams are on the road, then L.A. gets all three games. The NFL might also make an occasional exception to allow a “big” doubleheader game to air in L.A. at the same time as a Rams home game, but not often.

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On the first Sunday of the season, each of the four NFC North teams played on the road against an AFC South team. Too strange. Is this something new, or just a fluke of scheduling?

Tom Scheerer, Glendale

Farmer: First, here’s something you should know about the NFL schedule makers, who are led by Howard Katz, senior vice president of broadcasting:

With 256 games, 17 weeks, six time slots, five networks and four possible game days — Sunday, Monday, Thursday and Saturday — there are hundreds of trillions of potential schedule combinations. Katz and his team have as many as 256 computers around the world running 24/7 for months to find the closest possible match to the “ideal” slate of games.

Minnesota opened at Tennessee, Green Bay at Jacksonville, Detroit at Indianapolis, and Chicago at Houston. That pattern was largely a scheduling fluke, except that the NFL wanted to open with a game at Houston on Fox, because that’s this season’s Super Bowl site and network.

sam.farmer@latimes.com

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