
Behind the making of the NFL schedule - drtillberg
http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/patriots/2017/04/24/the-secrets-behind-making-nfl-schedule/F7JkpHeHwof5tssHrH38MK/story.html
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kevinmannix
This is a really interesting engineering problem. You have plenty of
constraints with competing interests with a defined set of inputs (teams) &
sets (weeks). There needs to be parity within the matchups and across the
season. Teams must play the other teams in their division twice. Stadiums may
not be available due to concerts or other sporting events. Beyond that, you
have the human factor of high-leverage games & television networks. It's also
something that's quite testable against many of the non-human constraints.

The NFL actually has quite a prolific GitHub organization [0]. I recommend
looking through if you have a few minutes.

[0]: [https://github.com/nfl](https://github.com/nfl)

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dnackoul
>There needs to be parity within the matchups and across the season.

I'm not sure how widely known this is, but the actual matchups, not order and
dates, are completely deterministic.

Teams play their division twice for six games. They play the other three teams
in their conference with the same division standing last season (e.g. division
champs will play each other). They play four teams from a rotating division in
the other conference. And finally they play the remaining three teams from a
rotating division in their conference.

I've always been a football fan but it took me a while to realize the NFL
doesn't actually schedule rivalries like Brady/Manning every year, they just
happen because those teams consistently win their division.

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s73ver
The matchups are deterministic. When they happen, however, is not. When making
the schedules, they need to take into account rivalries (you probably don't
want to have Cowboys/Redskins, Packers/Vikings, and Steelers/Bengals all
happening on the same weekend), traveling, and potential playoff contenders. A
game between two teams fighting for a playoff spot or division title is much
more exciting in December than it is in October.

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shanecleveland
> I would say that we’ve done our job if everybody’s disappointed, but only a
> little bit, and hopefully equally.

Not many "secrets" revealed, but I love this quote. It could be applied to the
culmination of a lot of software projects.

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rsoto
This reminds me of The Schedule Makers[1], a 30 for 30 mini documentary about
a couple that has been making baseball schedules for 25 years.

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT0CMOGKKhU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yT0CMOGKKhU)

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pimlottc
Nice piece. I like this bit in particular:

“The beauty of the computer is it can do in seconds what it would take us a
lifetime,” North said. “But it’s a machine. It will only do what it is told.

Always important to recognize that "the computer" reflects the values and the
judgements of its programmers. It's not inherently objective.

~~~
Neliquat
'Computers are dumb, they only know what you tell them' -the fly (1986)

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dan1234
On a related note, the BBC made a very interesting article about how the
Premier League fixture list is created each season.

"...The whole process starts upwards of a year in advance when Fifa and Uefa
release their match calendars but work starts in earnest in the final months
of the previous season..."

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulfletcher/2009/06/secrets_of_t...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulfletcher/2009/06/secrets_of_the_fixture_compute.html)

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iamatworknow
Up until just recently there was _one guy_ who figured out the NBA schedules
for home and away games for the entire league, manually. 30 teams playing 82
games. Pretty crazy: [http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2552322-as-nba-
schedule-m...](http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2552322-as-nba-schedule-
maker-departs-he-takes-with-him-an-era-league-wont-see-again)

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elchief
Fun fact: The New York Jets have never beaten the Philadelphia Eagles

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acemarke
Well, they presumably only play once every four years.

And also... it's the Jets :)

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jessriedel
Yea, it's only been 10 games. Even for perfectly random coin tosses, the
chance that you get the same result 9 times as the result of the first toss is
1 in 2^9 = 512. With lots of potential team pairings, and the obvious fact
that teams can be above/below average over 4+ years (correlating the
outcomes), this isn't that crazy.

[http://www.footballdb.com/teams/nfl/philadelphia-
eagles/team...](http://www.footballdb.com/teams/nfl/philadelphia-
eagles/teamvsteam?opp=22)

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maxerickson
There's only 496 pairings with 32 teams.

The number of pairings between teams that play infrequently will be quite a
bit smaller.

