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The Bible's veracity does not hinge on the question of a global flood, only a certain exegesis.

True that sentiment, but slight disagreement on the meaning of the word "exegesis". Perhaps you meant "eisegesis" instead. IMHO a truly exegesis reading (objective) of the Genesis text leaves open the possibility of the flood being a large region, not necessarily global.

I'm not saying the flood WASN'T global. I'm just saying the Bible text itself doesn't demand that interpretation. The Hebrew word "adamah" for the English world "earth" or "world" also has other literal definitions like "plot of land" or "region". The fact that the animals fit inside the ark suggests this. Another possibility: the flood was regional but wiped out mankind over all of the earth if it was done at a point in history before mankind had spread out from the Fertile Crescent. (Basically if everybody lived in one region then a regional flood would do the trick of wiping out man from the planet.)

Another possibility: God flooded the entire planet in such a supernatural way that we'll never find evidence telling us exactly how He did it. I tend not to lean that way on events in the Bible unless the Bible text itself describes it as miraculous. But it's possible God did it like that.

Had to look up the word "eisegesis" and at least the definition I stumbled upon indicates its pushing one's own ideas into the text instead of trying to figure out what the author was really saying.

However, I think a careful reading of the text indicates the author did not actually think that the flood covered the entire globe.

For example, note the following verses from Genesis 8:

5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

... 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth....

Seems a careful reading forces one to take "over all the surface of the earth" to at least not include the mountain tops in verse 5.

As I understand it the same Hebrew phrase for the whole surface of the Earth is used elsewhere in the Noah story for anything translated like the surface of the whole Earth. So I have to take it as an idiom for something like "pretty much everywhere". Certainly Noah would not have been able to sail the entire globe and verify Australia and Antarctica etc were covered.