Viktor
Well-known member
- Mar 19, 2019
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Minnesota will have a 44-day span with just one home game, but it won’t have to be on the road for more than two consecutive weeks at any point.
Michael Rand of the Star Tribune noted that the 16-game slate was finalized out of “about 60 trillion schedule combinations” once the order of opponents, days of the week and time slots are factored into the calculation.
Editor’s note: I don’t know if that number factored in the seemingly standard operating procedure of Minnesota hosting Chicago in the regular-season finale for the fourth consecutive year.
Rand interviewed Mark Karwan, a professor of operations research at the University of Buffalo who is in a group that was awarded a three-year grant to study NFL schedules in the quest of the most fairness for all.
Karwan told Rand that the total possibilities within one NFL season’s schedule have “more combinations than the number of atoms in the universe.”
Rand wrote:
To get a handle on all those combinations, the league locks in about 50 games before filling in the rest of the 256-game regular-season schedule. Some of those are coveted prime-time matchups, but others are less obvious.
Karwan also told Rand that Vikings fans should be fairly pleased with multiple elements of the 2019 schedule, including the avoidance of three consecutive road games, the fact that Minnesota will be home after both of its road Monday Night Football games and that Denver is the only team that will have its bye the week before playing Minnesota.