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>> We have a little group that actually does this sketch we're going to give you a little bit of history about it and so on and so here's what we do we currently are the schedule is for Major League Baseball and so the schedule those who you who are baseball fans you noted back the final weekend series this year had the Yankees and Red Sox.

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That was our schedule and the White Sox and the Indians all those great games and so that was that was part of our schedule we we also do a lot of college scheduling particular work for the A.C.C. and you'll see that's where we started I'll be talking about that today so we do that's cabal football baseball we do in volleyball I think we're also the volleyball and after the A.C.C..

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And we work with some of the other major and some smaller college conferences as well as well and putting together the schedules where we're a group of four Doug Berman who actually got us started in the baseball direction was a former vice president of the Pittsburgh Pirates. My trip got his Ph D.

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here in the late eighty's is currently a professor at Carnegie Mellon he was teaching an executive course in the business school at Carnegie Mellon that's where he ran into Doug Berman and Kelly Easton is one of my former Ph D. student she got a Ph D. here in the late ninety's and the title of Kelly's thesis was sports scheduling so you know this is a research topic as well as something that fun to do and also also interesting for business venture let me give you a little bit of a background so I don't know some of you may know that for the last something like twelve years maybe twelve years plus I have been Georgia Tech's rep faculty representative to the A.C.C. and to the N.C.A.A. and the N.C.A.A. actually may end.

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Ates that a faculty member served in this role as the liaison between the president's office and the athletic director. More of the main purpose is being to make sure as we know is the case at Georgia Tech that that. Athletics remains are our student athletes are students OK And so that senior what the N.C.A.A. oversees and and that was part of my responsibility but in one of the sessions of an A.C.C. meeting and those who follow A.C.C. basketball closely Fred Barack at who kind of manages the basketball for the A.C.C. Fred who is a completely non technical guy was saying you know for years I've done this basketball schedule haven't had a problem and now I just can't do it anymore because of the tremendous pressures that we're getting from T.V..

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And he was stuck he said I cannot come up with the schedule anymore that's going to be satisfied or T.V. partners and yet be something that's fair to all the schools and the coaches are going to be happy with and so on and so forth and so I would sit at this meeting and I said well you know we've been doing work at the time for some of the major airlines in terms of doing crew and Fleet scheduling work and I said this is got to be easier than that and so maybe we could help a bit.

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And so I knew that my trip could be as I mentioned had been a student here had been tinkering with Major League Baseball schedules he had not been yet really involved but I knew it had been tinkering with some of the issues involved in Major League Baseball schedules so I got in touch with my and and we actually implemented our first A.C.C. basketball schedule in one thousand nine hundred seventy that was our first schedule that we produced that was actually actually played.

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And we published a paper in that in a journal called Operations Research and. Now the schedule it was just played is our first major league baseball schedule. And you'll see that it's a different order of magnitude working. OK so I want to give you some idea of what scheduling is like here so what I'm going to begin with a trip a simple problem is possible your Imagine yourself as as you're running you know you're a parent maybe you're running a little league.

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And you've got ten teams in this little league and you just kind of make up a schedule for these kids teams OK. And so in this in this league each team is going to play each other. Once And so you know you can play nine other teams and suppose they play once a week so you'll need nine weeks and once a week all of you know you'll have.

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Each team play and and you want to play everybody else right so you sit down on that's got to be a trivial thing to do right so how do you start you start and say OK let's look at the first week I'll have team one play team to team three plays team four.

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That's your card that's your first week right and it makes sense right so now you go on to feeling good OK now let's see what the second week should look like so you sort of preview what you've got right the morning plays for you know it's everybody plays and you haven't played anybody you played before right it's working.

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So now you go ahead. And you continue to really you know it is easy to do right so at four. Five minutes you notice what we've got here everybody is playing somebody everybody is playing every week and everybody's playing somebody different. It's working just fine slot six one plays he said OK as one play three jack up want to get three has two played for you at now I put two against four that's what you do in this right as pliant five played seven you know I'll put five against seven.

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And I'm going to put six against eight whom I left with nine and ten right hoops nine in ten of players already I'm stuck. OK. And so you might go back and say OK let's scratch slot six Let's Start slots again OK. And anything you do now you can't complete it.

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You're stuck you cannot complete now is this a hard problem absolutely not there's a very simple way to do this problem in fact if you have the task that I just described for it for the literally. You can go on the Web you can find a simple program that will do this for you.

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You know free download It's easy to do it so it's not a big deal but the point is if you just set out to try to do it you can get stuck well do you believe me that we're stuck and so let me just show you one other thing here.

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OK so now the one bit of mathematics in this whole talk occurs right here. Here are the groups here are the teams that I've already scheduled. You know have scheduled one. Hitch what's left to be schedule Excuse me here's what's left of the schedule. And what does it mean in a given slot to schedule two teams together if I put this line here I guess eight and ten are going to play each other I still need that one OK and I have to be able to put now five lines.

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Matching teams that have not yet played I don't have one and two because they've already played. And so I'm going to put five lines and it's very easy to see that you can't do that you're stuck at that point you've got you have to go back and back up further do this right OK So this is but this is just the most trivial problem you could imagine the real problems are very different so one of the fundamental issues in the real problems first is fairness OK fairness you've got a hat you know what does it mean to have a fair schedule well maybe it shouldn't be the case that in in consecutive games you play the two hardest teams.

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You know somebody else has cut their games kind of easy you know Georgia Tech would not like to have to play Virginia Tech in Miami back to or Virginia Tech in Georgia back to back. They are now stuck playing Miami Heat In short your back to back because of the hurricane last week but you can't anticipate that when scheduling so so so fairness you know you want something that everybody is nobody's going to get sidetracked by some difficulties that other people don't have.

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So many schedules Major League Baseball is an example travel is very important you know if you play Sunday on the west coast and have to play Monday on the East Coast that travel in the easterly direction with the last time that's pretty nasty and you don't like to do that and we do some scheduling for some small college leagues where these teams unlike the A.C.C. teams travel to all their travel by bus you need to look at a ten hour bus trips you want to make keep those balance possible so you know if there are two schools that are within two hours to be juggler but both are very far from you you might like to pick one of them up on a trip right I mean that's that's the travel it's costly and it's also travel can couldn't in a college lead student time student miss class time is can be serious.

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OK but but when you get to the big leagues here's where it is it's all it's all in the revenue OK And so these schedules become hugely revenue driven and it's interesting to convert to contrast A.C.C. basketball with with some of the other other major conferences our T.V. contract is relatively much larger than any of the others and it's because the A.C.C. has chosen really to to to offer quite a bit more in terms of what the of what E.S.P.N. and their other T.V. partners want and the bottom line is the revenue is more than three million dollars per school from that contract which which which is important.

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So so this becomes a major driving force we talk about it going to talk about A.C.C. basketball first. You know. This is really much simpler then and then in Major League Baseball largely because instead of having thirty teams I have twelve teams and instead of playing one hundred sixty two games when I worry about the conference schedule we play sixteen games and so just the numbers are in the the numbers in Major League Baseball are overwhelming and there's nothing else like it I mean if you look at National Football League you know you talk about the same number of teams but talking about sixteen games you're not talking about one hundred sixty two games and just the just the massive size of the schedule is is a killer for those who know that when you try to do optimization as the problem gets bigger it gets much harder to do but so I'm going to start with something a little bit simpler A.C.C. basketball when it itself has as we had as many challenges.

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And. We were going along comfortably from. Ninety seven to two thousand and four because the A.C.C. had nineteen's. They played what's called a double round robin a round robin means you play everybody else a double round robin means you play all of your opponents twice and that's natural because you play once in your place once home and once away right and so the A.C.C. had this nice nice sixteen sixteen game schedule a double round robin and then in two thousand and five it went from nine to eleven schools double round robin would take twenty games the coaches did not want to play twenty games within the A.C.C. they tip their schedules about twenty eight games but of those twenty eight games you look at the beginning of the season they play a number of typically a number of easy games against the ponens who help build your good record to get into the and see a tournament at the end and.

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So they said No sixteen games and and in fact even when they went to twelve schools which is the schedule it's going to be played for the first time starting next month. They capped at sixteen games the team that was the one point they really held fast against the T.V. partners and T.V. partners you know love these A.C.C. games I mean they're the games that people want to see on television and they don't want to see Georgia Tech play North Carolina A and T.

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or some you know school that they typically beat by thirty points has no interest in T.V. and but what the coach is thinking about their success depends upon how they finish up the season where they get into the when they get into the N.C.A.A. tournament and so they held to two to twelve games.

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OK I've said this already through two thousand and four. And so when we do that when we say we do the schedule we actually don't do what's the summit some of the details of the schedule are not done by us so the schedule that we provide to the A C C is a week day weekend schedule OK we'll say this game is played Day This game is played.

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Some of the the most frequently use is Wednesday and Saturday but sometimes planned Tuesday sometimes on Thursday sometimes on Sunday and the times that a games and those actual days are not part of what the you know this mathematical scheduling process involves. OK So let me talk a little bit about the scheduling that that that went on through two thousand and four and so there you had nine teams got an odd number of teams in each slot you had four games.

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One teams out. And that's OK because typically those byes give you an opportunity to schedule a conference game and and and so on and so forth OK as I mentioned the expansion the A.C.C. added Miami and Virginia Tech in two thousand and five eleven teams Boston College now this year now we're twelve by the way the travel has become a little bit more serious now you know we we span from Miami to Boston.

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And. And it's no longer double round robin so a good bit of time was spent now. On what's a double round robin has a certain fairness to it right you play everybody else home and away now now there are going to be some folks who only sometimes you only play once.

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There's a little bit of fairness being lost here right depending upon who you play once and so quite a bit of time went into to looking at the long term structure now of how you're going to lay out several years and I'll talk about that in a minute.

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As I said they kept to sixteen games. On the T.V. wanted more T.V. talks about having a good inventory and that they stayed at sixteen. Fairness became an issue and another issue and in this this also had an effect on the whole expansion and when that would happen if those you basketball fans know the term Tobacco Road Those are the four North Carolina schools they're the schools that have traditionally been the great basketball schools due to North Carolina North Carolina State and way Far East and those teams now we're going to possibly lose all their playing each other home and away every year and they were quite unhappy about that set out to be worked out and so.

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We show you the new structure and a little interesting story OK and. Basically two thousand and five eleven hundred sixteen games per team. Works out to eighty eight games and you have to figure out you've got these nine weeks they played over nine weeks two slots per week and so if you look at that you break it out but this is the structure they used to for last year.

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And for this year now you've got twelve teams ninety six Games same same same number weeks and you get now you got a bunch of weeks that has six weeks have no by slots and twelve weeks have to by slots each team gets two bars. And typically by slot so you can play in on conference game or sometimes in a team just takes a week takes a lot off going to show you something interesting or so here is the structure now that they came up with.

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For four How are you. How you going to work out who you play each year and and and and so each school has two primary partners. And those who wants to conditionally have had a partner so for example. Georgia Tech Paris up Clemson is considered to be our closest neighbor so we pair up with Clemson every year and I think we've got Wake Forest kind of arbitrarily so those so you you play you two primary partners every year.

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And then the other nine schools are a broken up into groups of three the first group you play the first group you play home and away this is now I'm talking about two thousand and six you play that first group home and away. Georgia Tech will play. UVA Duke in Miami at home but not away will not see North Carolina the team that won the national championship last year at home this year OK we'll only play them away all right.

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So so that's the structure of the schedule that that is that sticks year in in the in the following year you just flip it. In the following sense you play the same three teams home and away but you want to change to win three and once you play just a way you play home the once in a way OK And and then after two years you rotate it you rotate it so the group this group the group one becomes group three Group three becomes group two and so on you do the same thing again for two years and up to six years that it plays out OK And so you play your primary partners in a six year period twelve times but everybody else only a part and you can believe that there was a lot of discussion that went into whose primary partners were Whose and so on and so forth quite a bit went into that and then a funny thing happened.

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After this was agreed upon the A.C.C. office said well you know in filling out these nine. Kind of easy we can put them in a groups we want and they they released something that was actually printed in. In some newspapers. And it was dead wrong you know if you went to a certain year you had you had Wake Forest playing North Carolina at home.

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North Carolina wasn't playing wait for the way I mean it was just totally inconsistent it was in a newspaper. I'm glad I didn't do that but I I was out of town and got a panicked call from the A.C.C. office you know it's desperate can you can we keep the same basic structure and make this work out and so.

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We we we did an all nighter and this is what the result was. OK So I think I've said that already and want to go from here. Yeah and I mention the rotation and how that works so let me tell you some of the details that went into making two thousand and six schedule which I'm going to play now OK And so.

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Here you see some of the flames that that that that come from the television requests so. Here are here are the. Things that came from T.V. and so by double games I mean teams you play home and away. And they insisted that if you're playing a team twice one of those should be on a weekday slot one on a weekend slot reason.

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Different T.V. contracts some people have the weekend stuff some people of the week day stuff they want to keep that fair from the point of the contract OK but when I forgot I forget you know a C.C.'s for T.V. partners E.S.P.N. A.B.C. They're the same company but still the opera I mean they are the same major company but they still operate separate managements and C.B.S. and Fox Fox Sports out and so they've got four different partners they're trying to please their And and I think E.S.P.N. has the wins they have as the weekday contract and so you see in big games there all these once they get so so so so these are singles these are teams that only play in each other once in two thousand and six but they insisted that these are all big games notice they all involve North Carolina.

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And then you get a bunch of boxes this year was actually all and so Duke usually plays some big big out of conference games. Maybe U.C.L.A. some other you know some other school with a very strong basketball program and they skipped that game gets fixed who would bait Duke's got to have one of its byes at that time and.

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North Carolina is the same way and one thing I didn't mention here is that. One of the Duke North Carolina games most beat the first weekend in February why is that beginning of February sweeps that's what I do television ratings OK that's what I do to television ratings and.

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That's why you play North Carolina there. And you'll notice some Always on this list be a ways come from. Shared venues so some of these schools do not have have have have a venue that that's that's their own you know they might have some other things booked there like a circus or you know or some or some other events and so they lose access to the arena and and and you got to change those so you see you got to be that they can't play as they say must be a way really to say must be away or have a bye it's just that they can't be at home.

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OK And then there's this funny thing about that the schedule always officially begins the way we do it in the first week day of January however the first week day of January has other complications and that some of the schools don't like to play that and because schools not in sasin you don't have students there and and and and then the A.C.C. got a special contract with Fox Sports had to move some games to the semi so these games got fixed in the first slot because they had to be moved to December I mean all these little details in here and then you get your final game matchups so you always play one of your traditional rivals and you you switch that every year Home and Away for your final game final weekend game.

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You talk about some constraints here and he would say that I say constraints make may be soft or hard there are some things you have to you have to live with and others they'd like to have that you try to get hard means have to live with soft means trying to get so you know if.

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If if if you have eight weekends in the schedule then you're going to each school has to have four weekend homes we can you know it's just more attractive than we date each school gets for weekend homes and therefore for weekday homes. Patterns these become very important. And this is when we first took over the A.C.C. schedule that they couldn't really do before the A.C.C. schedule has no school ever playing three away games in a row coaches hate that with a passion.

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And. You know mathematically we can guarantee that but if you try to do things in a more ad hoc way that's hard to get and so you say OK what's the next worst thing to three away games in a row away away and then maybe a home or a bar and then a way away again you know so now you've got four ways out of five slots so the first time we did the scheduling we eliminate all the Away Away Away is all this other stuff showed up and they said Now you can have that and that one saw used Interestingly enough the second one Away Away Home Away Away used to be hard and then it's T.V. requirements increase.

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Will take a couple of the but make sure that no team gets more than one of them you know when they're balanced and so on they also don't like to finish away a way home court advantage is big and so that's another one and when I was we got here.

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OK I mentioned it to the rivalry. February February's much more important in January. And a venue conflicts Michel one of the thing here separation so a very important thing in sports scheduling if you play a team more than once is that the two games should be separated. Substantially why.

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The the reason is that you know suppose you've got one of your top players you know you've got one of your top players players injured which may last a couple of weeks and so if you've got to play that rival twice without that player that's a big disadvantage so you like to separate the the games and and that becomes quite important which leads for the old A.C.C. double round robin schedule you could do what was called a miracle.

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Very simple you actually simple for us to do the first half of the schedule. You play everybody you play a single round robin in that first half of the schedule and then you just flip the Home and Away and do it again and you get perfect separation the games are separated as far as possible.

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And it's quite nice but without the double round robin you can't do it and even when the A.C.C. through two thousand and four maintained a double round robin in the end we couldn't do it because they for example they wanted both North Carolina Games in February. And that just killed it right there so that's what we talk about the the that's what we talk of the squad we almost do this and we're doing that for.

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Whenever we do one of these schedules we talk to a potential new lead I always tell them that that you're always going to want way too much than that then it's possibly feasible and and and for those of you who work in optimization usually an optimization problem is solved with something called an objective function maximize this you know make your profit as high as possible make your cost as low as possible make your happiness as high as possible whatever and subject to a bunch of constraints.

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But the people we've dealt with in this business don't they can never articulate a single objective. And yet what we do really based upon you know focusing on an objective and so what I tell them to do is if the constraints you know if things are not hard they don't have to be fixed make up a wish list.

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And do the best you can to prioritize to prioritize that wish list which then we'll focus on maximizing the first one first and but then I tell them you know what just like your kids at Christmas are your riches can't be granted so what happens what happens in doing one of these schedules really is that.

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For the A.C.C. basketball will run over a period of two months we might run fifty schedules OK it's there's a process that goes on look at the first schedule You know I I can't take this I can't take all of these Away Away Home Away always OK we're back off on those but what are you willing to give up then a little bit and it's a very intuitive process and so while the computer runs to do the A.C.C. schedule.

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Are very quick you know a matter of seconds or minutes at the most. The. The it takes about two months because we'll send a couple of schedules and they'll react will modify the objectives and. Until they get tired. Again slightly How do we do this how do we do this stuff how many of you are working on these kind of puzzles not in a rage now would you call them so do go puzzles you work on these.

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You can think of one of these almost as a big big massive such puzzle and the methods that we use are not unrelated they are very much more sophisticated but basically you trick you know you try something to keep track of what you tried you don't get caught with no alternatives and and and what we and what we can almost guarantee to people except for something like Major League Baseball we absolutely can't is that every possible alternative will be considered by the computer.

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The billions and we can't show you billions I mean you could never look through them but we will sift through them in some sort of logical fashion not unlike the way you do one of these puzzles. So this is what's called the research numeration method and how you do that research enumeration the feel that I work in is it the optimization methodology that I've been involved with with many students here a long time is this inner programming business and to my disappointment after we did that first A.C.C. schedule with it which of programming we found something that's a little bit less sophisticated but seems to work better for these kinds of problems call constraint programming it's related but a little bit different and that seems to be a better way to do stuff here.

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And for the A.C.C. basketball you know as I mentioned we might give him fifty schedules over two to three months before so we start you know we'll start to turn that work around in two thousand and seven schedule probably around the first of January and we might not finished on sometime in March and for those of you are interested here it is a little color coding reflects that some special requests that they wanted but that's that's that's actually what's going to be played and so you see there's stuff in here and it's not a new year we Georgia Tech starts playing next month but but all that part you know where there are games at the beginning with the easy opponents is easy to get that done by the individual schools and not by the league so but for example I mean is this by slot that you see that ducats here that's given as part of the schedule because Duke is planned you know some big T.V. game.

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So the expansion of the A.C.C. was interesting especially interesting for us because that affected the big easily get and it propagated and all these conferences across the country all of a sudden had. New schools new teams new requirements and they were all stuck so we were very happy about that.

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Worried about A.C.C. football and I'll go to baseball and. Say football unlike basketball is played into sixteen divisions you need the divisions for those who you are fans you need to divisions for football because the N.C.A.A. says if you want. If you want to have a playoff game you must have to do You must have at least twelve teams you must have two divisions and your playoff game has to be between your two division champions however you decide who are the division champions basketball I felt that was a constraint that they didn't want to put in so there's no divisions in basketball but in football there there are divisions and so the issue you know how to make the divisions was a big issue and so basically in football.

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Up through this year schools play eleven games they play of those eleven games they play eight or conference games you play everybody in your own division you have one permanent opponent in the other division and you play every year and that's that rivalry business so that's Clemson for Georgia it's AK We play actually play this Saturday and and and then of the other of the other five schools that have a division you play two of them were takes ten years actually to work through a full rotation of the schedule and they were huge complications that went into the transition of going from nine to eleven to twelve schools.

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Because you didn't play it turned out that Georgia Tech doesn't play Florida State for four years you may say that's good because Florida State so good but you may say that's bad because we don't fill the place in Florida State and and that's that's good to snow. Our television contract here drives things again and the those of you notice know it's the P.C.C. plays a bunch of Thursday night games that we've been the leader and again size and television contract the E.S.P.N. loves these Thursday night games which.

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Which is sides being disruptive especially on campuses where they have B.B. evening schools. Also create scheduling problems because you know normally you play Saturdays but if you play Thursday you probably don't want to play the Saturday before you certainly can't play the Saturday after and so you start getting gaps and the worst thing to possibly happen is you play somebody on Thursday the schedule made it so that you had to play the Saturday before but they didn't and that becomes a huge a huge advantage.

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And finally and finally. Next year is football much more difficult because the N.C.A.A. is now last twelve games every year previously it's only been eleven and so with twelve there's even to be less room for these Thursday night games and I just don't even know how we're going to do it.

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Here's the schedule playing right now. Which which we did. OK a little bit about let's see how we're doing and we have some time so let me talk some about Major League Baseball which we've had a lot less experience where. We have been doing this year and. Really quite interesting so so you know I don't know how many of you know baseball rules or don't know baseball rules but I'll just give you some of it and so.

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And so there are thirty teams divided into two leagues. And because most of the play is within a league each team each team each league needs to have an even number of teams because teams are playing all the time so you've got one league with fourteen teams and one league with sixteen teams but each team plays one hundred sixty two games.

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Played over well you'll see all the details here and so baseball unlike any of these others you play series you play several games in a row a typical series is is the New York Mets come to play the Braves and I'll play Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday sorry yeah that's good well no Monday yeah that's OK Tuesday when well no you always start Monday Tuesday Wednesday let's say then they have Thursday off and then some other team like the Phillies may come and play Friday Saturday Sunday and it's all a series is a set of games.

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And it can be well tell you about the series of them and let's see here OK. So each team place fifty two series each team has and so does fifty two series happen and we're going to be at home and half of those series Home series are going to be weekend series again much more value to the week and then a week day you must balance these OK and then they say you know besides balancing over the whole season you've got to balance it a month.

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So you don't want to have one team having all of its weekend series in April which is a bad month for baseball and another one having all the weekend series in July which is a much better baseball. This summer and needs to be balanced as well and. Here's something that baseball hates baseball likes you when you play at home to play to stew or three series OK So a typical one is your whole Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday it's an off day you play Friday Saturday Sunday another team you're at home then you might play a third series you might might go on or on the road but we have not been able to figure out how does zero out one series Home or road stands or force our schedules have always needed ones and fours and that's one thing we've been working hard on but have not been so you'll Kasia only see a team that's that goes on the road to play twelve games.

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And I like that or maybe at home for only three games and I want to. If I showed you all the constraints of this. So here I mean I'm taking this awful awful just their list of requirements so doubleheaders I don't know if you know what that one of those you baseball fans.

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Used to be the case when I was a kid it was to be Sunday always play two games they started it to you know a war I didn't play the game in a half an hour between I played the same team again they don't do that anymore except for making make up for rain happens to the end of the season you'll see some of these analogies because games had you know.

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And so you know you can't give a scapegoating to a bunch of schedule and so here is we got to keep track of travel here. And so no team this is this is the maximum turns out this is not a very hard constraint getting up to fifty thousand miles.

[00:41:45]
Is a lot so that's not too serious constraint but but baseball is one of the few that does does really mix travel in somewhat of a quantitative way with the other company Tauriel aspects of scheduling that I've been talking about and when you really try to mix the two you get to something that people in the OR community call the travel something like the Traveling Salesman Problem which which we actually have some real experts on our faculty and be no solve these but when you mix the two the sports and the traveling salesman and and so we have some hypothetical problems on a website that only involve.

[00:42:25]
Ten teams each place each other home and away once and you have a couple of other constraints you can't like place too many home games in a row and then you want to minimize the total travel of the whole schedule this is not a website for everybody in the world to look at and people have now solved eight teams and nobody I mean some of the best research teams in the world have to actually try to optimize and teams including I think odds and can't stop can actually prove what is the optimal That's how hard these problems are just normally hard when you mix the two.

[00:43:04]
OK Well I mean that's in their state OK here's one that this is the separation pro-baseball And I think this got us the contract actually when we got it I don't know if you know the history here so that there was a couple in and there is a couple in Hartford.

[00:43:22]
So somewhere in Connecticut I guess they heard it somewhere in doing that I think it's Connecticut and they have been the major league baseball schedules for twenty years and they do nothing else I mean that's their their full time that was their fulltime job. And and they had.

[00:43:41]
Better I mean. Article say that they don't use computers and that's not quite right I mean they use computers but basically their stuff was a huge board with magnets you know those magnets like you put on your refrigerator and they had this huge magnet board and they would you know and they they created their schedule on on on on that magnet board and it took us four years of submitting schedules.

[00:44:10]
Before Major League Baseball like the schedule that we produce better than what they did. So you know I mean they they were extremely experienced and good and good and you know we know that somebody's going to come along pretty soon and you know get one that's going to get rid of those four series home states which we can't do but here's one thing those people had had had real trouble with so if you look at.

[00:44:36]
Some pairs of teams only play each other two series one home one away they play like six games and and and their schedule was filled with baseball call seventy two Peters those two those two series were not sequence really together but they were saying consecutive weeks. And sort of braves you know the Braves would play the Cardinals here in the next week their only other series with the Cardinals at St Louis and they just did they just had a lot of the we didn't get him down to zero but we got him down to a very small number I think that was one of our our big things.

[00:45:18]
OK. OK And so not a series off and so I talked about the number of series in a stand there's also an issue. Of the number of games in a series and if you look you'll see some that that that there are always two three or four. But baseball wants three but in just fifty dollars together you get stuck with tubes and you get stuck with fours and so.

[00:45:45]
You try to minimize those things. Where else. Well. Nothing really interesting here. OK And and so just just to give you the flavor of the schedule here. American League has fourteen teams three each team each league has three divisions so the American League the east and central divisions have five teams and the West has fourteen and the National League you go five five six not five six five but but and so as you see already it's not balanced and all and and and and what the league likes is what the league has been going with lately is called an unbalanced schedule in that you play teams in your own division a huge number of times relative to the others.

[00:46:53]
And so for example the Yankees and Red Sox now in the same American League East play nineteen games. While the Yankees play most other teams in the American League only six games and the other maddening thing about about Major League Baseball is you know you build this technology and and all of a sudden they'll say hey we're going back to a balance schedule everybody's going to play everybody else twelve games or something like that we're not going to go to these and they kind of flip you know it's very strange management in dealing with these people when you have some of the most successful business people in the world are the owners of these teams right.

[00:47:40]
You know you've got the Ted Turner's and the George Steinbrenner and all these intimate wealthiest most successful business people in the world and they probably apply great business practices. To their real businesses but when it comes to their love of their their sports team rationality seems to get thrown out the window and.

[00:48:03]
All kinds of crazy things happen in what they want Newsweek schedules and and so on it's over anyway so if you look at this want to hear. The American League East and West you see how strange it is. You play everybody in your own on your own division six series.

[00:48:25]
You play a. Few nine in a league opponents you going to play seven of them. You're going to play five of them just just a double round robin Home and Away series and two homes and one road with so it's it's complicated and the same thing holds internationally I just want to go through all those details.

[00:48:55]
Of this and if I can OK in a really play so that's something that was introduced but I don't. Ten years ago something about six years ago now it never used to be the case that you played anybody other elite Now you play in a very complex way teams in the other lead and that makes the schedule even even more more complex.

[00:49:26]
To do. And I don't. I don't think I'm going to take the time because we're running on an hour an hour taking time to go into these details but. You know you rotate who you play except for some Firm rivals and that's kind of strange itself and it's it's going to skip all this you change each year but but like you have natural rivals and so natural rivals are kind of the Yankees and Mets they're in the opposite leagues but they play each other home and away each year and it's rather and you look at the natural rivals that are there but but the Braves are in a strange situation the Boston Red Sox have the Braves and the Phillies and they rotate one of their natural rival one year one of the National rival the other year and then you have teams that don't have natural rivals and so they're listed as no natural rivals and they factor in a different way in making the schedule.

[00:50:29]
And see here. OK I'm going to go. OK. And so now here's another interesting thing about baseball we have three constituencies in doing this. So we do A.C.C. basketball we work strictly with the league and interestingly enough when the A.C.C. priests' shows the schedule to the schools to the coaches you only see your own schedule they give you a chance to comment on your own schedule.

[00:51:06]
And but they do not give all the coaches everybody else's schedule because then you can say my schedule is OK but his is better you know I mean they don't allow that but baseball works differently so baseball we first deal with the leak. In the league chipset after the owners so you know I mean and and and then baseball has a very strong players and you know and so there are a lot of restrictions imposed by the players' union and they do get the final they're going to say it's wrong it's no team shall be scheduled to play more than twenty consecutive days.

[00:51:50]
Except you know and some of these will happen except this is off day here's something funny an off day is required when traveling from west coast to east coast but you allow seven exceptions but no more than one per team I mean so you can see how these things are negotiated right.

[00:52:07]
Now I want. Television comes in here strongly main in mainly in summer. And I have a list of teams that are preferred. OK now you get some interesting things you have in baseball some of the big cities have two teams Yankees and Mets and so you've got it would void conflict dates and what they allow they allow some you can't get rid of Molly getter and now you've got you've got shared stadiums with football seasons and you know to football baseball seasons overlap right so you got to worry about that and we just just finish off with.

[00:52:48]
With showing you. How we do this thing because we we're still far from optimizing this getting you know no one that we can find a truly best schedule it's just too hard and and so I mean we're constantly trying to improve our technology but but it but it really is too hard and and and so he and.

[00:53:19]
So basically. What we do is is is we break the schedule down into pieces. And this is our own thing this is not the something dictated by the league but this is something we do want to own so we take what we do is is we. Be there or it's this is just the general structure there are exceptions we take the beginning of the season we say OK we're going to play one thousand games in your division we're going to focus on playing Division double round robin tournament beginning.

[00:53:55]
We'll do the same thing at the end. That's how we got the Yankees and Red Sox by the way and all of the great games at the end because we didn't we focused on the division games beginning and end. And then during the time in between except at a time when interleague play is going on because that's a separate separate period so for a time when your league play is going on we say we schedule in early play separately but except in the tunnel in early players going on during the summer we have a full league double round robin and roughly that adds up to what you need and we do these pieces we do these pieces.

[00:54:39]
And then I will go internationally details but we solve this problem in five steps Well really. Just show you what they are really three steps first we solve the universe and that gets fixed then and then then we solve the the two and three are really separate the nationally and American League.

[00:55:04]
Double round robin tournaments in the middle and then we finish up by doing the division ones at the beginning and so we've actually broke this thing into into pieces and each of these pieces we can optimize to some extent you know almost But now what happens what's wrong with this where does our schedule kind of run into problems it runs in when you're seeing them together.

[00:55:27]
So we may have one piece finishing up where the team has in a way series of say a team has it away stand say of two series and then we've got another piece separately we try to paste that on there and that's that separate piece also starts with an away series an hour away series is getting too long and that's where we have because this thing is so big we have not been able to fully fully optimize it so the challenges are still there and and we're having lots of fun and I've gone for an hour and it's all you know I think anybody can stand this for so.

[00:56:07]
I'll stop now and if you've got questions. That's hard. That's hard and so and out and as long as they keep your nineteen if you take and he's Red Sox it'll be ten in New York nine in Boston one year next year it must feel. Now. Speaking as a Devil Rays fan I think.

[00:56:57]
He. Said. They got much power and this is the right. Story. Right now and so football does and so football does that right football does that and you know I mean I mean to be quite honest with you it would be fine and I would love to be involved you know at the table on those kinds of issues but but we're we're we're not there so you know they've given us this list of requirements you know we have some flexibility in how we structure the schedule and so on but limited.

[00:57:55]
Now. Good question and so actually for the first time this year. It's we never done it yet but for but we are now going to be doing your part scheduling schedule so I could tell you about when I haven't really looked at it carefully but but they got a bunch of cool Carmen's too and we actually will do numbers going to zero zero zero.

[00:58:26]
Not at all not with baseball. And then I mean in no case have we gotten involved in any I mean even the rain outs now now you've got open days so you know that should be able to handle your rain outs but. They kept this structure now for about four years but and so typically Major League Baseball actually involves.

[00:59:03]
Unlike the courage groups that we work with involves three or four different different different people like us doing work for them and they might you know for example last year they did know we talk close to the beginning whether Montreal was you know what we're much we're always going to be we're going to be in Washington and and and and so they need people to to do what ifs and say they constantly are happy they have a major group each year you see the group that did the last year schedule and in my employ two or three other groups to to look at someone if issues.

[00:59:42]
That are always looking you know at you know the owners might get interested in going back to a more balanced schedule where you play teams more you know a number of games more equal so they might say to some somebody you know what what would that look like if we try to do that next year and so that so they are doing that but but you know their actual decision processes you know I.

[01:00:05]
Don't don't have to have any idea. But enough changes each year or you get I mean the interleague stuff changes each year the teams you play in and you are within your own league not in the same division. You play some of them three series and some two series those change once that changes and they're in different places and schedules are really not recyclable.

[01:00:36]
Open dates. Nothing more than open dates and the fact that you cannot play to you know a hard constraint in their schedule that's not hard Bell. Leaving live with and if it brings other things but roughly twenty almost Hardy's you can't play more than twenty days in a row.

[01:01:00]
What do we use it no we do not use an inch of I mean that's that's one kind of approach but it's not it's it's it's called a genetic algorithm it's a heuristic that you know doesn't guarantee optimal solutions but it can be fast for certain kinds of problems but it's not something that we have I mean we've looked at it but.

[01:01:22]
What. But I think I I mean in my opinion now we're getting kind of technical there are better things to do than than genetic algorithms and I'm not a fan of genetic algorithms I'm a fan of the act you know. That you. Know. Right. Away. Well the coach I mean you know the teams apart from the games you're fixed to play within your league.

[01:02:14]
You can. You know Georgia can decide to play as they've almost always done just a very soft out of league schedule and you know in those three games are pretty they can chalk up as wins and it's not going to help them push up in that in that rating or day can play a couple really hard games in at you know at some schools do that I mean Florida State does that in Miami does that some do and some don't and but they have control over that.

[01:03:01]
We don't have so what you're saying I mean I mean you know I mean it really is a hard constraint because you can't have the baseball and football game here. At that same time by bed but basically basically they get what they say is try to avoid it.

[01:03:16]
And you know they will negotiate if they have a problem so they you know try to keep this down recognize that it's a problem but neither one is getting a priority over the other about who goes first they don't seem seem to too to work together the two are or and I didn't I didn't say how long it takes us a database and so we spend a half a year actually.

[01:03:43]
We start a baseball schedule until when you know it's done and and we're typically running a half a dozen P.C.'s Most of the time during that period. In terms of that since I mean a lot of free money time is going to. Sort of so there are four of us altogether.

[01:04:08]
And we've actually competed for the National Football League schedule as well. They're very different they're very different baseball this is so hard because of its size. Football is is is way smaller but much more T.V. driven. And and driven largely by the money and their biggest contract is their Monday night.

[01:04:34]
Their Monday night contract and I think the annual N.F.L. football T.V. contract now including on the Sunday games and so over the years they play something like three billion dollars a year and that's the value of the contract so I've always said if you know if you can give them a great schedule it should be worth one percent of that right.

[01:05:01]
Yes yes but but we're starting to rethink it we have problems with the baseline and we're starting to rethink it. Here. Now you know two or three. To. Their baseball Yeah. I can't really say sorry. But you really. Are you. Well I mean I mean the big problem that we're working on is twenty do something like as big as baseball better or even the National Football League schedule in which.

[01:05:58]
I mean those are the ones that are. Where the action really is and we'd like to do that as well as we can and we don't really have the technology yet yet to do those nearly as well as we can and and part of our technology came from one Kelly Easton who's who who works with us full time who got her piece you know she spent her whole ph the time.

[01:06:24]
We're working on this stuff fan and and and Kelly's now and I think in a very good position because she's a. Young mother of three three little kids the last one just being born about two weeks ago and so she it's purely a stay at home job right so she can she can do this in two am or wherever you know and so it's a neat kind of thing for the service she's our She's our main She's our main turn the crank person.

[01:07:09]
So so so basically to schools negotiate themselves without a conference of points and and and you know agree to some kind of contract like Georgia Tech grease to play or bird home and away from certain years and and and then if those games are very important games. That you know T.V. is really excited about they will become fixed as we start to do the schedule.

[01:07:43]
Or yeah you. So so when we begin the schedule well almost. Almost. But but certainly the important ones are fixed. Term start and then example. Florida State Notre Dame or something like that that game is going to be given to us that is you know they both Florida State Notre Dame of negotiated that contract that's a good and usually that game will be will be fixed there you know they hear and if you look here last week Clemson played Temple.

[01:08:17]
Temple was kind of an as not want to game and I don't know how long and just got thrown out of the Big East Conference temple was looking for opponents so temple became the sort of sop So they said to us you know Clemson is going to play temple put that game and you know we have four teams that are league playing temple.

[01:08:37]
You got a little flexibility where you can put those games so I mean that's that's what's pretty much happened to the importance of the game is going to drive how how specifically it's located for example is the see has agreed to something like four I may have a number not quite right but some like for Thursday night were maybe six Thursday night games football games in a season so we'll get a list from the A.C.C. football guy out pain games he's saying look you can you can pick any six out of these ten games for your Thursday night games he starts off with saying I want these six games on Thursday night and I say you know.

[01:09:21]
It's not quite work so you can you know need flexibility need some flexibility and so that's why we put this one and put it. Yeah so you've got to worry about that you've got to worry about that and an end and usually there are there are times in a season like a football first couple of weeks they you know they usually will say OK let's leave those open for non-conference And you know and by the way and E.S.P.N. may help the leagues because E.S.P.N. obviously cares.

[01:10:09]
They maintain a master list and so if a conference wishes and usually it's only you know the one of the administrators at a conference who has the password to get into that E.S.P.N. master list and see what other conferences are doing and and so on it's the first I've seen of that and I've had a look at that list and it helps if you some flexibility there but you do need some coordination there and I think we're running out of time here folks.

[01:10:41]
One last burning question otherwise I think we should thank you.