The Schedule

This past week the NFL presented the 2014 NFL Schedule with a three-hour show on their own network, NFL Network. Incredible. The league had to do something to break the slowdown brought on by this ridiculously long wait for the 2014 NFL Draft. The funny thing about the grand presentation of the schedule is that we've known all of the games since the end of the 2013 season. The only mystery was when those games are played. Which is a pretty significant mystery. Fans can now make their plans for the fall.

I once saw a picture of then NFL commissioner Bert Bell, seated at his kitchen table, plotting the NFL schedule with dominoes on a chart. A lot has changed since those simple days of the 1940s and 1950s. Bell never had to plot more than twelve teams. The dominoes required now would fill Bert Bell's kitchen. They might even fill Roger Goodell's kitchen. Probably not. The process of coming up with the NFL schedule has intrigued me ever since I saw that picture of Bert Bell. It's a lot different now. Sports Illustrated's Peter King wrote a terrific article on "How the 2014 Schedule Was Made" for his Monday Morning Quarterback website. No more dominoes. Computers are used now.

"At NFL headquarters, four men and 40 computers work for 70 hours, sifting through a half-million possibilities."-Peter King

NFL senior VP broadcasting Howard Katz, NFL senior manager of broadcasting Jonathan Payne, NFL VP/broadcasting Onnie Bose, and NFL senior director of broadcasting Michael North are the four men. They have quite a task in front of them every single season. Fans have been screaming for the schedule for weeks. That's more because of the long wait for the draft than a true impatience over the schedule. The media talking-heads, perhaps parroting the raging fans, have questioned the delays. The many possibilities of a twelve-team league schedule forced Bert Bell to use easily maneuvered dominoes spread across a kitchen table. He was responsible for scheduling 144 games without a screaming public at his door. The four men tasked with the job this year had to schedule 512 games. The numbers alone are staggering but it's even more complicated than the numbers. A tour by some band called "One Direction" impacted the scheduling of several teams. Playing this season at the University of Minnesota's TCF Bank Stadium forced restrictions on the Minnesota Vikings schedule. A quilting show even threw an obstacle in the path of the San Francisco 49ers schedule. A quilting show! The NFL will play three games in London. That's three more than is necessary but that's my own little issue. Those three games threw another set of variables into the equation for six teams which then impacted a bunch of other teams. It's a "butterfly effect." A lot goes into the NFL schedule. We shouldn't take the process for granted. The Flea Flicker salutes and thanks Howard Katz, Jonathan Payne, Onnie Bose, and Michael North. Maybe we'll one day get to the 2014 NFL Draft.

A quilting show!