ORLANDO, Fla. -- NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue was optimistic about the chance to sell flexible scheduling for the final weeks of the season.

He concluded the annual NFL owners meetings in Orlando by saying what he plans to pitch to Fox and CBS along with the owners in future meetings. On Tuesday, he unveiled his three-pronged pitch.

"We have more games than ever," Tagliabue said. "Back when Jacksonville and Carolina came into the league, there were only 14 games a week. Now, there are 16. That's a windfall in terms of number of games. All networks have gained."

Tagliabue would like CBS and Fox to give ABC the freedom to switch Sunday games to Monday late in the season. That would allow the NFL to promote itself with better games on Monday Night Football, theoretically generating larger audiences for all games as a result.

By expanding to 32 teams, the NFL will be able to schedule 16-game weeks in the first and second weeks of the season and in weeks 11 through 17. There will be a bye week for each team, but they will be handled from weeks three through 10.

Tagliabue also plans to sell the Sunday networks on the fact that the NFL recently changed its television policy to allow a city with an NFL home game to have a network doubleheader game on the air.

"That added more than 100 games," Taglabue said. "Before, the home team only had two games in the market."

Tagliabue's final selling point is that the flexible schedule concept isn't really new.

"CBS and Fox have had flexible schedules for quite some time," Tagliabue said. "They've moved 4 p.m. games to 1 p.m. and they've moved 1 p.m. games to 4 p.m.

It is not known when Tagliabue would be able to get a resolution on flexible schedules.

Also on the agenda
In other activity at the owners meeting, Tagliabue said that he would still try to convince owners to consider more investment in the Arena League. Eight current NFL owners either own or are in the process of buying Arena teams.

Because there wasn't a consensus of owners willing to pick up a 49 percent option in the Arena League, a March 31 deadline will elapse. Tagliabue met with Arena president David Baker to tell him of the owners' decision. The NFL will revisit the idea in its May meeting in Houston.

Tagliabue also said the NFL will continue its research into a 2007 New York or Washington, D.C. Super Bowl. He would like to escalate discussions in order to start narrowing future Super Bowl sites by the October meeting in New York.