Somehow Bears and Vikings opener on MNF is coincidence, right?

The NFL has its tankathon time and also the Chiefs conspiracy with Taylor Swift and the officials wanting to keep Kansas City in the playoffs.

But nothing like the NBA, where healthy star players mysteriously are pulled out of games repeatedly, go on the injury list when they cut themselves shaving, or the coach with his job on the line suddenly decides a game's last four minutes is an excellent time to test the mettle of those three guys they called up from the G League.

Could the conspiritorialists have something new to chew on, something going on in the NFL schedule-maker's office?

It's worth wondering what's going on here when the Bears are playing on Monday Night Football against the Vikings in the opener on ESPN.

Bears and Vikings is a divisional rivalry, but there are plenty of those in the league the league and network could have scheduled.

The Bears' rivalry is with Green Bay. They face the Lions and Vikings twice a year, being in the same division. The traditional rivalry is Green Bay, even if the Packers and their fans like to talk down to the Bears by saying Minnesota is their rival now because they're more competitive.

So why would the NFL want the Bears and Vikings in a prime-time season opener, on ESPN? Hmmm.

Especially with Monday Night Football needing to boost horrible ratings, it doesn't seem like the best idea to have a hum-drum MNF game to start the season. ESPN's MNF rankings were down 14% last year. They can really use a boost and if you're going to do that, the Lions and Bears would have made more sense.

The real attractive matchup was Ben Johnson going back to play the Lions. It would have been ideal for a prime-time opener but we get the Vikings and Bears. What a letdown. Or is it?

Oh, sure, there's the J.J. McCarthy debut and return home to Chicago, but it's a good bet very few Bears fans don't even realize he played high school ball for Nazareth in LaGrange Park and don't even care. Certainly the rest of the country wouldn't know this or even care enough to make it a point of interest for a prime-time game.

Oh wait, Caleb Williams wanted to go to the Vikings and play. Wow. It's all part of the Seth Wickersham book coming out, one talked about last week in an ESPN article that caused quite the stir. It came out right during the week the schedule came out.

There's a real hook if every you needed one for a MNF season opener.

Holy cow. What do you know? What a total coincidence!

And Seth Wickersham is a senior writer for ESPN. And the Bears and Vikings will be on, what was that network again, oh yeah, ESPN.

How about that (to be said like Mel Allen used to say it)?

The book comes out in the fall, just in time for the start of the season, which begins with Bears and Vikings on Monday Night Football, televised by ESPN.

The schedule was actually made well before the story broke last week. So it's all just an incredible coincidence that the Bears and Vikings are in the MFN opener, just like those little balls that keep bucking all the odds and sending top players to convenient NBA teams. Right?

Either that, or ESPN and the league conspired for this matchup on ESPN well in advance of the schedule coming out, but that sure seems a bit cloak and dagger, right?

We couldn't get the real opening matchup that we should have had: Ben Johnson goes against Dan Campbell in the Detroit madhouse, with all of that gut-wrenching drama.

It's Bears at Lions in an afternoon game on Week 2.  No one outside of Detroit and Chicago will care or see it.

For the opener, it's Vikings and Bears. Call it the Wickersham Bowl.

The idea it's a conspiracy? It's all just a bunch of (four-letter word, one beginning with E, ending in N).