THE PROCESS OF HOW AN NFL SCHEDULE IS MADE

                                    THE PROCESS OF HOW AN NFL SCHEDULE IS MADE

   Everyone claims their team schedule is rigged. They hate us is heard every April. Actually, it is 4 NFL executives in a secure room with hundreds of computers making possible schedules. The entire process relies on just four people.

   Senior Vice President of Broadcasting Howard Katz

   Senior Director of Broadcasting           Blake Jones

   Senior Manager of Broadcasting          Charlotte Carey

   Senior Director of Broadcasting           Michael North

   They begin collecting information from teams in January about any events that are or in pre-planned in or around the 32 stadiums in the NFL. They also take into consideration each teams divisional games and the league rotation schedule that assures each team plays each other every four years.

   Typically the league starts on a Thursday night with the Super Bowl Champion at home. Starting this season, the late in the season Saturday games will have times to be announced no later than week 8.  Most weeks have the Sunday early games 1pmest and then the later games at 4pmest. They have to include the Sunday Night and Monday Night contests as well. On Sundays, the AFC road games are on CBS and the NFC road games are on Fox.

                                                          CBS AND FOX

   The first 16 weeks are double headers are split between CBS and Fox with each getting 8 games a piece.  They try to alternate the doubleheader games each week between CBS and Fox but sometimes that is impossible. Although, sometimes a network may have doubleheaders in consecutive weeks it is forbidden for a network to get three in a row. 

   Since 2007, the NFL now has international games as well. A three-week window is considered to make it less of a burden on teams traveling between the games. 

                                                          FLEXING THE GAMES

   In 2006, the league established Flex Scheduling. The executives consult the networks CBS, Fox and NBC. They are required to give 12 days notice to inform the home teams ticket holders of the switch. In week 17, they can flex more games. The 1pmest games can go to 4pm, or moved to Sunday Night Football on NBC. These decisions have resulted in watching the games on TV in the final week of the season more entertaining. 

                                                          CROSS FLEXING

   In 2014, they created cross flexing which is switching from one broadcast network to another. However, if CBS was to receive three of CBS games then CBS would receive three of Fox games in return. 

                                                          THE BYE WEEK

   Another obstacle to overcome is every team gets a Bye week. The schedulers work hard to make sure a team doesn't receive to much of an advantage or having the schedule benefit to work for one team over another. For example, teams that go and play in an international game will have a bye the following week. If a west coast team was scheduled to play a game in London on Sunday and then return to travel to the east coast for an early 1pm game. That is giving one team too much of an advantage over the other. This is avoided at all cost at least as much as possible. 

   It is very rare that the NFL alters an NFL Schedule. There are some occasions it is unavoidable such as September 11th, The wildfires in San Diego, Extreme weather such as a hurricane or rarely a unforeseen event like in 2013, when the Oakland A's surprisingly made the post season. The A's were scheduled to play and a Raider home game conflicted with the two events. Time had to be considered to switch the playing field from a baseball field to a stadium field. The Raiders moved their game to accommodate for the A's postseason home game.

    Fans began making their plane and hotels reservations at the same time the 32 teams start booking theirs. The long awaited NFL schedule release is the most secretive list that is never leaked until the NFL decided that it should be. Four people who's decisions impact so many.  

   The best time you hear about the NFL releasing their schedule give a toast to the four people who have to consider so much to make the yearly schedule.