Ebersol, NBC gradually piece together Sunday night team

0 Comments | USA TODAY, December, 2005

To NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol, it is his "moving mosaic" -- an objet d'art he says he might not work on until March. At stake: Who will appear on the network's NFL programming when it begins airing Sunday night games next year.

Ebersol says the only certainties are that Bob Costas will host NBC's Football Night in America studio show -- an operation Ebersol suggests will be "a wide-ranging kaleidoscope" -- and John Madden will be a game analyst. Cris Collinsworth, sitting out NFL game coverage this season after leaving Fox to sign with NBC, is a wild card. Collinsworth, like nearly all ex-players on TV, has worked as an analyst rather than a play-by-play announcer.

But Ebersol says he "goes back and forth every day about where to put Cris." He sees him as "the...