when you see an awesome matchup OOC basketball matchup announced usually it is within a year, sometimes as little as 6 months before the season starts.

meanwhile if it happens in football ==> cool, but you usually have to wait 3-4 years to see it.

is there anyway that college football schedules can be made as quickly as basketball and on such short notice? I know there are a lot of things to consider and FB & BB are very different sports. but realistically, why can't schools do it like BB every once in awhile.

It happens occasionally but it's much more complicated in CFB because each team has only 3 or 4 spots each year for non-conference games.

Typically when one of those marquee matchups is arranged in CFB less than a year in advance, it involves several athletic directors and ESPN doing some horse trading to get teams to move a scheduled matchup to a different week or a different year or cancel it altogether to make room for the game that ESPN is trying to set up.

ESPN developed and owns a software program that acts as a master schedule operator for college football, which lets them run multiple hypothetical scenarios for switching game dates and years in order to create matchups or move a marquee game to a new date where ESPN wants it. It also allows them to find out within seconds which teams, out of all of FBS, have a bye week on a certain week or need an extra non-conference game for a certain year, etc. ESPN lets CFB teams use this program for things like filling holes in their schedules or finding a new opponent when someone cancels at the last minute.

I was thinking it was an issue having to do with people scheduling hotel reservations, and giving venders enough time to prepare for the large crowds and stuff like that.

(06-14-2014 12:53 PM)john01992 Wrote:  I was thinking it was an issue having to do with people scheduling hotel reservations, and giving venders enough time to prepare for the large crowds and stuff like that.

Its more that when a power conference school is negotiating several years in advance, it has lots of options, and that freedom of maneuver gives them bargaining leverage. When a power school is negotiating for the coming year, its options are much less open and so its freedom of maneuver is much more limited, so it often loses a lot of bargaining leverage.

The greater freedom of Power BBall schools to schedule home games midweek in the period before conference play starts means that they have a lot more freedom of maneuver for scheduling dates for the coming year, so they don't lose near as much bargaining power in waiting.

Basketball scheduling also has the advantage that there are so many OOC game that it is easy to add without a lot of lead time. Basketball OOC scheduling isn't confined to one day a week during a five or six week window between late August and the conference schedule in October.

100 players + 50 support staff and band and cheer needs 100+ hotel rooms and meals and those are not cheap with shorter notice

average football game last over 3 hours

average basketball game last 1 hour and 45 minutes

average football stajium in NCAA is probably 45,000 people average basketball arena probably 8,000 to 10,000

football outdoors in all kinds of weather from very hot to very cold so you need to make sure fans have food and especially drinks

basketball is indoors and most fans not on life support could probably go the entire time with no concessions so there is a great deal more logistics for getting a football game set up from a fans perspective

major programs build support through tailgating at football, that is a rarity if at all for most basketball

to fill a 45,000 person stajium (much less one twice that big) you need tens of thousands of out of town fans most that will stay overnight and that is thousands and thousands of hotels and meals and a hell of a lot of fuel and police and medical personnel

much easier to "control" and deal with under 10,000 fans for a basketball game especially when they have not been getting fueled up drunk and gorging on BBQ before being in the elements for another 3+ hours VS showing up to the game and walking indoors often to nice seating with seat backs ect

those thousands to tens of thousands of hotel rooms would cost a ton more money and be much more difficult to book at the last minute thus reducing the number of fans that decide to travel to a game of football.......at some places fans are making reservations 9+ months in advance and at some places I believe fans just reserve rooms for many of the potential weekends when they know they will be able to travel and months in advance cancel the ones that turn out to not have a game with little or no charge

basketball you have your shoes and socks and jocks and shorts and shirt........12 or so guys on the team and much less harsh on the body so fewer trainers to get players ready and less equipment to transport hell the players probably carry most of their uniforms and even training supplies in their carry on or checked luggage for most programs

football has a semi truck full of crap and 100+ players worth of helmets and pads ect to get ready and players to tape up

airline flights are much cheaper with with advanced notice especially charter flights......a 737-300 seats 137 so that is about a team and coaches and some trainers if you take the band and cheer squad add another

basketball can usually get a commercial flight if needed and there are few enough traveling last minute to really fill the plane or even close to it

much more broadcast equipment intensive for football especially overhead cam setups ect

arenas have roofs and rafters probably prewired or possible in nicer ones with cameras already in place and fixed........football can be prewired, but the cameras come and go

it goes on and on

(06-14-2014 12:49 PM)Wedge Wrote:  It happens occasionally but it's much more complicated in CFB because each team has only 3 or 4 spots each year for non-conference games.

Typically when one of those marquee matchups is arranged in CFB less than a year in advance, it involves several athletic directors and ESPN doing some horse trading to get teams to move a scheduled matchup to a different week or a different year or cancel it altogether to make room for the game that ESPN is trying to set up.

ESPN developed and owns a software program that acts as a master schedule operator for college football, which lets them run multiple hypothetical scenarios for switching game dates and years in order to create matchups or move a marquee game to a new date where ESPN wants it. It also allows them to find out within seconds which teams, out of all of FBS, have a bye week on a certain week or need an extra non-conference game for a certain year, etc. ESPN lets CFB teams use this program for things like filling holes in their schedules or finding a new opponent when someone cancels at the last minute.

I this special software by chance called Microsoft Excel + an intern?

(I'm joking. I'm sure it's very sophisticated.)

Scheduling football games a couple of years in advance seems reasonable. But scheduling 7, 10 or 15 years out does seem like total overkill. I'd be interested in some stats on how often games scheduled that far out actually get played. Teams rise and fall over and what sounds like a good matchup in 2014 might be a dog of a game in 2024. The schools involved will likely have gone through multiple coaches and ADs in between, any one of whom could cancel the game, and most of them will if a better offer comes along.

(06-14-2014 09:51 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(06-14-2014 12:49 PM)Wedge Wrote:  It happens occasionally but it's much more complicated in CFB because each team has only 3 or 4 spots each year for non-conference games.

Typically when one of those marquee matchups is arranged in CFB less than a year in advance, it involves several athletic directors and ESPN doing some horse trading to get teams to move a scheduled matchup to a different week or a different year or cancel it altogether to make room for the game that ESPN is trying to set up.

ESPN developed and owns a software program that acts as a master schedule operator for college football, which lets them run multiple hypothetical scenarios for switching game dates and years in order to create matchups or move a marquee game to a new date where ESPN wants it. It also allows them to find out within seconds which teams, out of all of FBS, have a bye week on a certain week or need an extra non-conference game for a certain year, etc. ESPN lets CFB teams use this program for things like filling holes in their schedules or finding a new opponent when someone cancels at the last minute.

I this special software by chance called Microsoft Excel + an intern?

(I'm joking. I'm sure it's very sophisticated.)

I think it's called Oracle and a student assistant.

http://www.statesman.com/news/sports/col...amb/nTsTN/

Long-term scheduling is a hedge. Lock in while it is available rather than run the risk of scrambling late.

I don't know how ESPN does their voodoo but they work some wide reaching deals. I know that right before the 2008 schedule was announced they asked AState to drop a game that year with Penn State and go to Alabama for the same money and then go to Oregon in 2012 with a guarantee of an ESPN/ESPN2 appearance for the Oregon game. So ESPN is working up to 5 years deep.

(06-14-2014 11:32 PM)prp Wrote:  Scheduling football games a couple of years in advance seems reasonable. But scheduling 7, 10 or 15 years out does seem like total overkill.

The games further out on the horizon are likely to have sliding scale buy-outs, where the less notice is given the more it costs to buy out.

And some involve more than just a pair of games. When MSU did their strategy of offering 3-1's to the three MAC Michigan "Directionals" (in part as a dig at the attitude of That School Up North to the Michigan MAC schools), that was a deal that involve a total of 3 away games and 9 homes games. It had to be spread out over a 10 year span.

And in the event the Big10 decided to go to 9 conference games and the schedule had to be reworked to make it fit.

A pair of schools can agree to a four game home and away contract with the last game 12 to 15 years out, but the actual games most likely to be played are the first home and away sequence. Or a standing series, like the Vandy deal with Wake Forest which was supposed to run for longer than it did, but AFAIU was upset by the SEC moving the Volunteer/Vandy game to rivalry weekend.

There are a finite number of games in football. With BB, if you play in a preseason tournament or two you could play 1 or 2 games or as many as 5 or 6 if you win.

Maybe it could be done if there were a single entity making all the decisions. But there are ten different conferences preparing league schedules, and more than 120 different FBS schools plus close to that number of FCS schools all trying to lock in specific dates. Schedules may seem set far in advance now, but they are nothing like they used to be 30 years ago when it wasn't uncommon for a school to have its opponents locked in 8-10 years in advance.

Schools could enter into scheduling agreements with a large group of other schools for 1 home and 1 road game on particular dates with the teams to be determined shortly before the season (maybe the first two games of the season).

Imagine 20 teams in such a scheduling alliance. Matching could be done by preseason ranking. So, the top team would play the next two ranked teams that matched the home/away requirements.

This scheme could be used to increase the strength of schedule for the top teams and result in more evenly matched games across all the games.

Each school would typically have 2 other OCC games to schedule rivals or whatever.

I think this would be a good deal for all involved.

(06-16-2014 02:28 PM)jarmzet Wrote:  Schools could enter into scheduling agreements with a large group of other schools for 1 home and 1 road game on particular dates with the teams to be determined shortly before the season (maybe the first two games of the season).

Imagine 20 teams in such a scheduling alliance. Matching could be done by preseason ranking. So, the top team would play the next two ranked teams that matched the home/away requirements.

This scheme could be used to increase the strength of schedule for the top teams and result in more evenly matched games across all the games.

Each school would typically have 2 other OCC games to schedule rivals or whatever.

I think this would be a good deal for all involved.

The MAC tried that and there were AD's from other leagues who signed those deals who weren't happy because they felt the MAC tended to stack the deck. The claim some made was that they had to travel to a mid or upper mid level MAC team and then would get stuck with a tougher team coming to their place.

Of course AD's whine nearly as much as coaches do.

(06-16-2014 04:11 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  The MAC tried that and there were AD's from other leagues who signed those deals who weren't happy because they felt the MAC tended to stack the deck. The claim some made was that they had to travel to a mid or upper mid level MAC team and then would get stuck with a tougher team coming to their place.

Of course AD's whine nearly as much as coaches do.

That's interesting. I didn't know about that.

(06-15-2014 08:28 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Long-term scheduling is a hedge. Lock in while it is available rather than run the risk of scrambling late.

I don't know how ESPN does their voodoo but they work some wide reaching deals. I know that right before the 2008 schedule was announced they asked AState to drop a game that year with Penn State and go to Alabama for the same money and then go to Oregon in 2012 with a guarantee of an ESPN/ESPN2 appearance for the Oregon game. So ESPN is working up to 5 years deep.

ESPN can work their magic because they only have to rearrange the schedules of a few teams, and are willing to pay them handsomely for their inconvenience. Try doing that with 120 teams.