Sports Scheduling Woes

Being involved with sports scheduling (though not yet the National Football League), I sympathized the the schedulers, who missed an issue, from espn.com:

The NFL has moved up the start time of the New York Jets’ game against the Tennessee Titans on September 27 after the team complained to the league about having to play home games on consecutive Jewish holidays.

The league made the change Friday, rescheduling the 4:15 start to 1 p.m. a day after Jets owner Woody Johnson sent a letter to commissioner Roger Goodell suggesting the switch to allow fans to arrive home before sundown on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement.

The Jets’ home opener against New England is 1 p.m. on Sept. 20, which falls during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

It is stunning the number of issues a sports league needs to address.

3 thoughts on “Sports Scheduling Woes”

  1. We can call this as the fate of players.One might need to play in a day very special to him.In a team there are different types of people or of different religion.But above all i think the feeling,team spirit will overrule all these…

  2. To figure out which fans should be stuck with the late game on Yom Kippor, should the NFL create a ranking of the most/least Jewish metro areas? These would be constraints on a sliding scale, which I guess you OR folks wrestle with on a regular basis, no?

  3. Was reading this today and thought you might be interested.

    http://www.cbssports.com/nba/story/11761490

    I guess there is a wrestling event the same night the NBA wants to have a playoff game in Denver. Do teams factor in playoffs when doing their regular season scheduling, or is it all done if and when they make the playoffs? There’s probably contracts with both the Nuggets and the WWE for the arena so someone will have to give in and there will probably be lawsuits. It’ll probably seem like a public relations debacle to schedule something and not think your team is going to make it that far, but it could be the NBA being heavy handed and saying this is when it starts period, but are the arena owners supposed to just not book anything for the spring? I’m sure there’s contingency plans because there’s always the chance of natural disasters like an earthquake that could cause schedule changes but both sides are probably not wanting to give in at least initially. They might just have to have less of a layoff between games, so i guess that is their slack.

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