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Conference complexities exist for leagues both big …

By Gary Brown
NCAA.org

Think institutions have it rough finding slots for a dozen nonconference games? Try juggling logistics for a 144-game schedule in a 16-team conference that has nine public arenas among its host venues. That’s what Big East Associate Commissioner Tom Odjakjian does every year.

Widely regarded as the toughest league to schedule, the Big East has the most teams, the most nationally televised games, the most nonconference games during the conference season, and – most conflicted – the most teams (nine) that use a public or professional facility for all or some of their home games.

The only thing Odjakjian has least of as far as scheduling goes is the time to do it. While most conferences have several months at their disposal to roll out a slate by August, Odjakjian has to wait for the NBA and NHL to release their schedules and then scramble to have something together by Labor Day. Even that was more difficult this year because – of all things – LeBron James’ late announcement of where he’d play in 2010-11, which delayed the NBA’s release of its schedule.

Odjakjian uses computers to generate drafts, but as he says, “The most sophisticated software in the world isn’t moving Disney on Ice or the Knicks game.”

Among the puzzles Odjakjian has to manage:

• Both teams in the Big Monday game must have played on Saturday so that neither has a competitive advantage in terms of rest. Teams also can’t play three road games in a row more than once a year (it’s impossible for it not to happen at all, which is why the conference stipulates that it not happen more than once). That stretch also can’t be in the team’s first or last three games.

• If a team plays on a Thursday night, the league doesn’t allow it to play Saturday afternoon. Odjakjian: “But what if Saturday afternoon is the only availability for the building because there’s a pro game that night? Do you give up that date or just make sure that team doesn’t play Thursday?”

It all makes for a padded-cell kind of existence. By late August, Odjakjian still had four buildings with American Hockey League commitments and was praying that they didn’t use all the dates they had saved. Of course, concert promoters sit on those leftover dates, too. Arenas make more on a concert than a college basketball game, so it’s easy to see where that is heading.

Somehow, though, Odjakjian has managed to make it happen for 15 years. His previous 14 years? Well, he was the scheduler for ESPN. “I used to buy games from all the conferences when I scheduled for TV. Now I’m selling,” he said.

“I don’t expect everyone to be absolutely happy with everything about their schedules,” Odjakjian said. “We just try to make sure we’ve minimized or eliminated the worst possible or egregious situations.”

… and small

While the Big East relies on computer software to a degree, some smaller conferences count on people who are getting their degrees. The Division III Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference uses the Center for Athletic Scheduling on the Wisconsin-Stevens Point campus to formulate the league’s basketball, soccer and football schedules.

Wisconsin-Stevens Point math professor Andy Felt and a group of students plug in conference criteria and meet regularly with clients to generate the slate. They charge only a small fee to pay students a stipend and buy equipment.

“The model is simply a number of mathematical equations to produce what the criteria call for,” Felt said. “What comes out is a bunch of ones and zeroes, and then we interpret that into a schedule. Then we contact the client and check on whether our interpretation is what they meant.”

The students are learning math and also communication skills because of having to extract information from the client. “Our goal was getting enough business to have something for the students to work on and provide enough financial incentive for them to want to do it,” Felt said. “But we’re not into taking business away from other companies that do this for a living.”