Schedules

[ETRAIN]

I know schedules are a bear to code, but will there be the same schedule logic every season?

I'm not talking so much about the list of who teams play in a certain season. That should include 6 division games, 4 games against all the teams in a different division within the conference (rotates), 4 games against all the teams in a division outside the conference (rotates), and 2 games against the remaining 2 teams in the conference that finish in the same place in their divisions.

I'm more concerned with variance within the season. Front Office Football, for example, has every team play a division game Week 1, a non-conference game Week 2, and a division game Week 17. Would we have a little more spice with the schedules?

Short of that, would there be ways to mod the schedules?

Also, it would be cool if we had a Monday Night Game every week between two good/popular teams every week, even if just for cosmetic purposes.

[Francis Cole]

Yes the schedules are randomised in the sense of week 1 won't always be a divisional rival (but they obviously still stick to the real format as you said - if you are having the standard NFL 32 team league).

No they are not modifiable.

Yes there are MNF and TNF games in the correct dates.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Francis Cole

Yes the schedules are randomised in the sense of week 1 won't always be a divisional rival (but they obviously still stick to the real format as you said - if you are having the standard NFL 32 team league).

No they are not modifiable.

I would strongly suggest adopting something along the lines of the OOTP schedule file system which allows users to create and edit schedule files outside the game and then import the resulting files into the game. This may not be as critical for NFL league users but may be rather important for those users doing fictional leagues.

In terms of the creation of the real-life NFL schedule, the following excerpts may be of interest. They come from the Introduction of the book Pro Football Schedules by Ivan Urena.

The scheduling process beings in January when teams "submit lists of requests detailing stadium availability and preferences for scheduling order." In 2012, "more than 70 block-out dates" for stadiums were submitted. During the week of the Super Bowl, Howard Katz, the NFL's scheduling guru, meets with representatives from Fox, CBS, NBC, ESPN and NFL Network who present their own wish-lists of games they want on their schedule for the following season."

To meet the rigorous scheduling demands with thousands of different variables and constraints, the NFL turned to Rick Stone, a Canadian manufacturing engineer. Stone, president of Optimal Planning Solutions, developed a specialized optimization software that provides scheduling solutions for professional sports leagues.

When the 2009 schedule was created, for example, Stone's software generated roughly 1.3 million schedules which were then narrowed down to 3,500. "Of the 3,500 schedules we actually finished, we probably took 50 of them and read them all the way through," Katz said. "What I mean is, once we get what we think is a playable schedule, we'll post that and say, 'Here's our leader. This is a schedule we're prepared to play.'"

"We won't look at another schedule until we think it's better," he went on. "This year [2009], we went through probably another 50 finished schedules. So, once we got a finished schedule, we probably improved it roughly 50 times, where we said, 'OK, this one is better.'"

"The beauty of the software is that we can go into every single game, every single week, every single place where we could be playing a game and we put some parameters around it," [Michael] North [NFL director of broadcast planning & scheduling] said. "You can say to the software: Mix and match these any way you want to, just know that each games comes with a certain set of parameters. I don't want to play this game any earlier than week three or this game any later than week 14. That game should fall in sweeps week, somewhere between 9 and 12. That game should be in Pittsburgh instead of Cleveland. That game needs to be on a Thursday night, which means that both teams need to be playing a home game the week prior. The software," he adds, "can do what we were only dreaming of doing 10 years ago."

In addition to the weekly Thursday night games that have been added to the NFL schedule in recent seasons, there are also these aspects to note:

A slight modification was then made to the existing schedule format at 2009 owners' meetings. Owners voted to modify the West Coast pairings of teams beginning in 2010. After the Patriots and Jets played four games on the West Coast (Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle) during the 2008 season, the owners agreed to ease the burden of traveling multiple times out West. ESPN.com reported: "Under the new plan, teams wouldn't have to visit two West Coast teams, just one, along with a team closer to the Midwest. Specifically, Oakland will be paired with Denver, and San Diego will be paired with [Kansas City]. In the NFC, Arizona and San Francisco will be paired as will St. Louis and Seattle."

At the 2010 Annual Meeting, additional scheduling changes were discussed. On the issue of teams resting their starters at the end of the season, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said: "We are trying to schedule it so that potentially Week 17 will be all divisional opponents and maybe even a large part of Week 16 games. We think that will address this to some extent. It will not necessarily eliminate the issue but ... we need to continue to look at this because it's important for the quality of what we do and for the integrity of the game."

As a result, beginning with the 2010 season, all 16 games scheduled in Week 17 were divisional matchups. That same year, the final three weeks of the season included 28 divisional games, up from 15 during the same period in 2009. In 2012, for the third consecutive season, to increase the potential for more games with playoff ramifications and possible divisional titles on the line, all 16 games scheduled for the final weekend of the regular season were division contests.

[ZBGuy]

Regarding byes, will you be able to modify how many bye weeks will be in a season? I'd prefer to have two byes in my hypothetical league.

[Francis Cole]

Not at the moment, but it's on my list of things to do.

[Orioles1966]

Don't like the fact that the last week of the NFL season is only divisional games. That's starting to get old. For the next 50 years I know the last week of the regular season(unless they decide too change).