The Season with Peter Schrager: The NFL Schedule with VP of NFL Broadcast Planning & Scheduling, Mike North

On the Eve of NFL Schedule Release Day, Mike North takes us through the process of making a 272 NFL game regular season schedule. With now 5 different major networks, 32 teams, and countless other factors at play, North tells us how the sausage is made. The schedule is a labor of love, a combination of "art and science", and has become an annual tradition and part of the NFL calendar. North gives us a behind the scenes look on how it all comes to be. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Season with Peter Schrager is a production of the
NFL in partnership with iHeartRadio. Welcome everybody to a very
special May edition of the Season with Peter Schrager. It's

(00:29):
schedule release time, and I thought this was very pertinent
and also very timely to do this today, which we
are recording this on the Wednesday before the schedule is
officially released on Thursday. And let me tell you it
will be released on Thursday, but you'll start getting your
leaks on Thursday morning. The reason is the schedule makers

(00:51):
have come to their conclusion with the final schedule and
they have started notifying the teams. So for today's guests,
we're going to have on Mike North, who is part
of the team that puts the schedule together. For years
it was a gentleman named Howard Katz, and Howard still
is very much involved. Howard deals with the broadcast teams
and the executives at not only CBS and Fox, but

(01:13):
now ESPN and also Amazon and of course the NFL
network as well, and they figure out the best possible
schedules that is going to satisfy as many parties as possible.
That's their job. We're gonna have Mike on in a second.
And now, as we record this, it's before the schedule
has been released. You might be listening to the pod
on your morning commute, even if it's after the schedule

(01:34):
comes out. I think what you're gonna love is how
the sausage is made. And that's kind of what I
want to do with this podcast as I look at
it from twenty thousand feet, what is going to separate
this podcast from others? Well, it's here the decision makers.
Here are the people that are telling you things that
you're not gonna get anywhere else, And here's kind of
getting ahead of things. I thought the the S two

(01:56):
cognition test discourse was really interesting, and I'm joined, of
course by my great producer Aaron wang Kaufman right now
and Aerin. I feel like we had the dude from
the S two cognition test well right before the huge
controversy erupted with CJ. Stroud, and I felt like, that's
what we want to do with this podcast, right, like

(02:16):
first guest back from paternity to leave, let me get
the guy who invented the S two cognition test. I
think you might have rolled your eyes, but that ended
up being a huge talking point in the twenty twenty
three draft.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Right, Yeah, I loved it, and I mean I would
never rule my eyes. I kind of love the I
know the wonderlook is an imperfect part of the draft process,
but I've always loved that that processing aspect of it,
which I think is really interesting.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yes, So, I think Mike North is going to be
a great guest, and we're gonna have him on in
a second, real quick, some housekeeping items. We're gonna do
this podcast throughout the off season. This is the dead
time once the schedule comes out, and this is pretty
dead besides franchise talk talk and maybe sae Quon Barkley.
But I'm gonna try to bring on some some good
guests over the next few weeks. Some that are NFL related,

(02:58):
some that are celebrities that are fans, some that are
just interesting to me. This is the time to do it,
and I think we're going to keep the momentum going
with this podcast. One note, love my execs at the
NFL network, love the way that we cover the game.
I might have missed it. I thought there was a
cool opportunity yesterday in the dead time of the NFL

(03:19):
to give Joe Capp his love and who Joe Capp
was and his impact on the sport. I didn't see
it anywhere, and it might have been on NFN. Eric.
I don't sit and watch it twenty four hours, but
I didn't see much of it online. So I was
walking down Henry Street in Brooklyn, where I live, and
I filmed my first ever first person point of view
video and just put it on Twitter. It was literally
twenty seconds and I got a crazy response because I

(03:42):
just felt like there was an opportunity to shed some
light on who Joe Capp was. In short, Joe Capp
is the only man in history of the sport to
lead a team to the Rose Bowl. He led Cal
to the Rose Bowl, to the Gray Cup, did that
for the BC Lions, and then a Super Bowl, did
it for the Vikings. I put this video out and

(04:02):
I said he was also the coach of Cal for
many years, he was the coach of the famous on
the field game against Stanford. He was the coach of Cal.
And then in his last game ever, which was nineteen
eighty six, Joe Capp was the coach of Cal. His
last game, they were down twenty one points against Stanford
and they came all the way back and won and
it's considered one of the greatest wins in cal football history.
So I did this little video. I'm walking by Fascotti

(04:25):
Pizza and the Ramen Place and I'm just filming it.
My son's barking in the background. He's with me walking.
I'm just like, here's just rest in peace. Joe Cap.
Here's who he was, eighty five years old, passed away.
The responses were crazy, and then I get a text
from Ron Rivera this morning, who I don't know. If
he's on Twitter, I don't know what he's Somehow the
video made his way to him and he was like,

(04:46):
thank you for doing that, and he's like, and I
have a great Joe cap story for you. I played
for the man and I'm like, damn. So we were
texting a little bit and I feel like there's a
little niche there, There's a little something there. So maybe
we'll get that stuff going on in the podcast too,
where you know, a little bit look back at history,
some of the people who made the game what it is,
some of the decision makers that are doing things in

(05:09):
the league. But right now we're looking at NBA playoff talk,
we're looking at a writer's strike in Hollywood, we're looking
at succession on the final few weeks of that show,
and we're looking at the summertime. And the summertime is
where everyone takes their foot off the pedal. With the NFL,
I usually say it's twenty four to seven. No, I'd
be lying after the schedule comes out. This is where

(05:30):
everyone takes a little bit of a breath. There's another
league meeting next week where we'll get word on whether
Amazon has the capabilities to flex on Thursday Night football.
I think that's gonna be a big decision. We'll find
that out next week. Most likely it was tabled from March,
so I would think that's then maybe we get some
commander's news at that meeting, maybe not on who's gonna

(05:51):
be the owner of that team if there is in
fact going to be a sale. And then there's just
like franchise tag talk, and I think a lot of
that talk was kind of there's a pin put in
it with Lamar obviously, and then it's kind of just
Saquon as the last like big big that we're going
to be tracking in New York that's going to be
a topic tonight. I am going to the Knicks game

(06:13):
and I'm going with an NFL related guest. I don't
know if I can share it yet. Maybe I'll share
it at the next podcast. But it's a new face
in town, NFL related who has never been to Madison
Square Garden. And we were texting and I got offered

(06:33):
two tickets from a very generous friend who could not go.
And very rarely do I get two tickets to a
Knicks playoff game. The seats are not crazy. Will not
see me courtside. I will not be on the Douglas
Element celebrity row jumbo tron. These are seats that are
up in the rafters, maybe tier below that. I don't know.
But I am taking someone involved in the NFL who

(06:54):
I think is going to play a big part of
the twenty twenty three season. Aaron, if you were to
take a guess, new to the market, big impact act
on the twenty twenty three season and has never been
to Madison Square Garden, that is like a weird twenty
one questions, But take a guess.

Speaker 2 (07:17):
I mean my first thought was Rogers until you said
never been Damas g because we know Rogers has already
been I kind of think it's Hacket, but you're.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
You're right, you got it. I'm taking Hacket in that
and that hideous beer to his I'm taking Hackett as
my guest. Now, look, we're recording this right now. At
four o'clock, I'm gonna get on the subway. I'm going
to take either the two three from Clark Street or
the A train from High Street, which both go right
to the Garden. He's taking a New Jersey Transit train.
I don't know. Look, I don't know if people are

(07:48):
going to be, you know, swarming him or not. I
was like, maybe you drive in. I don't know. And
we're meeting at Penn Station and then going to the game,
and uh, we're gonna talk. He's never been to the Garden,
So hopefully I get some information, uh that I can
share on the podcast, but more than anything, just want
the experience and hopefully the NIXT win. Have you been
following Knicks at all or you don't? Oh yeah, okay,

(08:09):
oh yeah, all right? Good?

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Oh yeah. I am shocked with the heat in general,
like this has been. There's these there have been a
lot of really good games. I watched that Nick. The
last Knicks heat game I was watching, I was there
were moments I was like, the heat is so much better.
They don't know why.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
They don't miss threes. And then the Knicks are supposed
to be so big with with d with Randall and
Robinson and the big guy I'm going black isaaia have?
Why am I going b like fifty five whatever? Big
white dude who can rebound and played with Jok in
Denver for a year. I forget his name, harten Steinstein.

(08:49):
Yeah he's good, and I'm like, all right, they should
at least dominate the boards. And then they're getting out
rebounded by a Miami team, and like this Miami team
is like, you know Kevin Love, I'm like, oh, Kevin
Love is still in the NBA. Oh Kyle Lowry, Oh
Kyle Lowry is still in the NBA. And I don't
even know. I followed the NBA so closely and then
I really pick up during the offseason. But like, I
didn't know Vincent number two, I didn't know Caleb Martin

(09:10):
number sixteen. These guys are good and they're crushing the Knicks,
so we'll see tonight. I feel like the Garden might
not have the same juice as it did Game two,
which I was at and it was tied at one,
and it was like, let's tie it up and let's
get this thing going. I feel like the wind might
be out of the sales of this next team. But
we'll see. Hacket's going to be in attendance, so you'll

(09:31):
hear this tomorrow morning. And I assure you we will
not be on the JumboTron. The seats are not good enough.
Do you want me to get Mike North on here?
Should we do it? Let's work all right. Mike North
is in charge of the NFL schedule. He works with
a great team offhand, Charlotte Carey, Annie Bo's and the
wonderful Blake Jones. Those are his teammates, and Howard Katz

(09:54):
is kind of the godfather of it all. And they've
been working on this schedule that is going to be
released on Thursday. They've been working on it for months.
And I'll tell you if I'd be lying if Mike
and I didn't have a few conversations in March about
what Rogers's latest status was. But it is all settled,
and Lamar is all settled, and the schedule makers can
send a nice thank you note to Green Bay, to

(10:15):
New Jersey, and to Baltimore for getting those things done
before the schedule comes out. Mike North after this, with
no further ado. In the monologue, I explained how much
I love talking to this guy, and I'm such a
geek for the schedule making process, but it's him and

(10:35):
it really takes a village, and he's going to get
into all the different parties that have been involved. But
as we are recording this, it is four o'clock Eastern
on Wednesday. The schedule is being announced on Thursday. So
for your morning commute, for your morning workout, let's just
get into it with the vice president of NFL Broadcast Planning,
the great Mike North. Mike, what is up, my friend?

Speaker 3 (10:57):
Peter? How are you? My friend?

Speaker 1 (10:59):
I am amazing, and I want to start off with
the way we're trickleing the news out this year. I
feel like last year we started doing it with the
International Games. But today, which is Wednesday, we not only
got the International slate, which looks really good and robust,
we also got a Black Friday game, we got a
Christmas Day game, we got a New Year's Eve game.

(11:22):
What's the strategy and kind of making this from schedule
release day to now schedule release days.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
Yeah, a little bit of a breadcrumb approach, if you will.
You know, I'm old enough to remember that. You know,
when we used to build the schedule, we literally built
it sequentially by hand. So we would start, you know,
kind of middle of February with week one, and then
we'd build week two and three, and at some point
you would finish the schedule and if you didn't like it,
you could go so far back up, but you could

(11:49):
never go all the way back to the beginning. It
took us ten weeks to get here. If we were
going to start over, it would have been another ten
weeks schedule to come out in July. That's not an option.
So I'm old enough to remember that we were building
it sequentially, and you'd get it done and it would
be somewhere around the middle of April. You would show
it to the boss and we would just put it
out the next day. And there was no you know,

(12:09):
ramp up, no runway, no marketing, no excitement. It just
was almost kind of stealth. It was almost kind of
ninja that the schedule just suddenly was here, and that
wasn't really fair to our fans, it wasn't fair to
our teams, it wasn't fair to the ticketing partners. So
a few years ago, Peter O'Reilly from our events group
and Hans Schroeder, who runs a broadcasting group, kind of

(12:30):
got together and said, you know, sneaking the schedule out
a week or two before the draft doesn't seem right.
Doesn't seem fair. If nothing else, it's not fair to
the kids who we've been talking about as draft prospects
for a month. Let's let them have their moment. Let's
let them have the month of a month of April,
and then once the draft is over, gives us just
an extra couple of weeks just to see if anything
surprising happened during the draft, and then we could put

(12:53):
the schedule out kind of middle of May. It's a
little later than maybe some of our teams would prefer.
They do have a lot of work to do starting
tomorrow night, relative to charter flights and hotels and planning
and meeting spaces and stuff like that. But as a
member of the scheduling team, I like the extra couple
of weeks. I like being able to search through this
infinite space just a little bit longer and hopefully come

(13:15):
up with a winner, and once we have one, Yeah,
instead of just dumping in on everybody all at once,
here's all two hundred and seventy two react.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Go.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
You know, here's a little bit of a breadcom approach,
a little bit of a trickle, a little couple of
sexy drips, and yeah, we'll do a few more tomorrow
as well. And yeah, I hope everybody gets excited and
it just makes them even more interested in what's coming
when the whole thing comes out on Thursday night.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Well it's a smart play also because you know, I'm
not in on Good Morning Football right now. I'm still
on the paternity leave. But I saw Taylor Rooks from
Amazon was on Good Morning Football discussing the Black Friday game.
I saw that Good Morning America is going to play
a role. Today's show is going to play a role,
Fox and Friends are going to play a role. This
is really leveraging the broadcast partners to make the most
out of these prime time and premiere matchups. And I

(14:00):
feel like this, you said, Hans and Peter, but I
feel like your group also, you guys roast to the
occasion here. And I know we always talk about the
NFL network being twenty four to seven football, but this
really could be a formality. It could just be let's
put it out, but we have created a tent pole
event that roll your eyes. Gosh. Everywhere I walk on
the street in New York, people are asking me, you know,
when's the Jets game in Vegas? Do you know? It's

(14:22):
a real thing people want to know. And it becomes
almost like the NCAA tournament releasing you know, their brackets.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah, it's exactly what it is, and you see them
when they do the March Madness brackets. Everybody's doing it
in real time. You know, nobody has it before then,
which is fun, it's interesting, but you don't really get
to kind of focus in on oh that's a big one.
That's when we really need to talk about or hey,
let's get a former player in here to talk about
this one. And the commissioner said to us the other day, Hey,
maybe we should have a fan announce one of these

(14:50):
games next year. So all kinds of different ways that
people can get excited. Everybody's got their favorite game that
they're looking forward to. I know we're not supposed to
read the internet comments, but I read them, and I
get that. Some people are like, hey, we knew the games,
we knew who was home and away. All you're doing
is putting them in order. That's true to certain extent.
We knew the Jets were going to Vegas at some point.
We knew Kansas City was coming to New York. But

(15:11):
you know when it happens, and which television partner it
lands on, and where in the season, and who's you know,
home the week before and who's the week after, and
who's Thanksgiving and Christmas in London, And there's a lot
that went into it, and it's it's fun to kind
of let each of these kind of tent pole games
have their own little moment and let fans start getting
excited before we dumped the whole thing on them tomorrow night.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
I have so many questions, and we're going to get
to them. I feel like, let me, let's let's start
off with the thing that you mentioned about the sequential
building of a schedule for years by hand, and then
by the time you get to week eleven to go
back and change week one is so difficult. What is
this strategy? Now? Do you look at those tent pole games,
first plug them in and then kind of coloring the

(15:54):
dots or is it we just pump in a bunch
of different permutations, but we know that Hey, Thanksgiving, we
want to have a couple of big teams, like, how's
it work now?

Speaker 3 (16:02):
Yeah, the way it works now? And all credit to
our software to developers Optimal Planning Solutions out of Western Canada.
Our hardware partner is AWS, our optimization partner GEROVI Optimization, Like,
we could not do this without our really really skilled, competent,
qualified partners. When we were building it by hand, we
were literally doing it manually, one game at a time,

(16:24):
one week at a time, and no human can understand
if you do this in week three, what hell you
hath wrought in week sixteen? And so what we realized
was it's not a top down process. It's really an
inside out process. What we need to put on first
are the key games to your point, the ten polls,
whether it's the Sunday night games, the Thursday night games,

(16:45):
the big doubleheader games on Sunday afternoon. There's rules and
restrictions and how many of each, and we don't want
the same team too many weeks in a row, and
you know this team's up and coming. We should get
them in, but maybe not too late in the season.
Maybe put that one earlier in the season. This is
a big game, though, that one seems like we could
save it for later in the season. So you kind
of build a shell what we call as a seed
schedule and call it sixty seven. The tent Pole Games said,

(17:08):
it's a lot of games, the national television games, And
we spend months just grinding on that shell, just grinding
on that seed schedule, before you even worry about how
could we even finish this seed? Is this seed right?
Is this seed gonna grow? Is this seed gonna make
a nice tree? So we build lots and lots and
lots of seed schedules, and the whole team all day,

(17:28):
every day. Howard Katz, Hans Schroeder, Annie bos Blake Jones,
Charlotte Carey, Lucy Popko. It is twenty four to seven
for fourteen weeks, and it's looking at these seed schedules.
Would this, if it were to birth a tree, be
a good seed to build off of? And if not,
why not, well, maybe that's one too many primetime game

(17:49):
for these guys. Or if we're gonna do them. Maybe
we shouldn't save them all for December. How about a
couple early or spread them out a little better. You
know the big teams, you know, the big brands, the Dallases,
the Kansas City's, the Jets. Now with Rogers Philadelphia coming
off a Super Bowl run, those guys are gonna be
all over your national television schedule. But it shouldn't as
necessarily be the first ten weeks or the last ten weeks.

(18:09):
So can you spread out those key ten polls? And
once you've got a seed schedule that you like, can
you solve around it? And when you do solve around it,
there's only so many options. At that point you've put
seventy of the two hundred and seventy two games on
the board. There may not even be a way to
put the other two hundred on it. So solve around
this seed, and then solve around this seed, and solve
around this seed, and we make in any given night,

(18:31):
probably between fifty thousand and one hundred thousand seeds. Try
to solve them all. Come in the morning, all right,
what's good about it? What's bad about it? What would
we change? What would we keep? What would we never
want to see again what should we prohibit? And then
if something changes, you know, the Raiders get a new quarterback,
the Saints get a new quarterback, the Ravens sign a
new wide receiver. The raven signed the quarterback that we

(18:51):
weren't sure they were going to sign, Aaron Rodgers gets traded.
That changes the definition of what these good seed schedules
are going to look like. So fifty thousand more seeds now,
with the new information that we have, try to solve
each of those. And as the seed schedule wolves finish
up in the finished schedules, and you try to analyze
each of those what's good, what's bad, who's happy, who's mad,

(19:13):
and try to make sure that you kind of maximize
everybody who's happy and hopefully minimize everybody who's not.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Okay. So you and I have been friendly for about
a decade. In the last few years, I've really got
because you know, I geek out on this more than
anyone in the media. I love it, and I love
all the science behind it. I also love the human
relationship with it. So you're meeting with the broadcast partners
at some point and they're giving you a wish list
or is it a summit meeting where all the broadcast
partners are in a room and it's a discussion, how

(19:40):
do we know what Fox wants, what CBS wants, what
NBC wants, what ESPN wants, and now what Amazon wants,
and how do you stack that against? Okay, we also
have to satisfy this team camping on the road three
times in a row, or this team is coming off
International week one of those meetings, and I guess how
do you juggle all that? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (19:59):
Look, it's you know, now that you're a father of
more than one child, you know, you know you're not
suppose to have favorite children. They're all tied for first.
Same with our network partners. We love them all equally.
We love all thirty two teams equally. But this is
a zero sum game, right. Anything that's good for the
Texans is by definition bad for the Jaguars. Anything that's

(20:20):
good for CBS is probably bad for Fox. So you're
trying to kind of thread that needle and strike that
right balance so that, like we said, everybody gets something,
nobody gets everything. Nobody, no team, no network partner should
be way too happy on release day or way too disappointed.
That's not our best schedule, so trying to find out where,
you know, everybody's just a little disappointed hopefully, and yeah,

(20:43):
kind of equally so, so we meet with all the
network partners.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Kind of the league meetings. Yeah, we should do it.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
During Super Bowl week either here in New York before
we all travel. It's obviously.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
So just give me an example. It's like Eric Shanks
and Sean McManus and like who, Yeah, it's Top Networks.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
And Eric Shanks and his programming team, Mike mobi Hill,
Bill Wanger, Jacob Bowman from the production side, Mark Silverman,
Jordan Bizan, all the key executives from Fox. We get
them all in a room or on a zoom and
we bring our whole team Brian rolap Pon Schroeder, Howard Katz,
Annie Bo's, Blake Jones, Charlotte Carey, Lucy Popko. We're all
there together and all right, what are we shooting for here, fellas?

(21:21):
What's the target? What do you think? Here's what we're thinking.
And we all just kind of brainstorm a little bit
and kind of highball it and talk about Look, if
you're Fox, you know you're still the home of the NFC.
Even though the road team no longer, you're still predominantly
the home of the NFC, and as such, if you're Fox,
I'm sure if you could wave a magic wand you'll
take a Dallas Cowboys game in the four to twenty

(21:42):
five Eastern time window every week of the year. That's
what our fans have told us they are most interested
in watching. So there's a balancing act. Obviously. If everybody
walks in with a wish list, here's our top ten games,
and these are the games we want, every partner's wish
list is going to look pretty similar, right, everybody wants
Philly Dallas. Everybody wants Casey Jets, everybody wants Dallas San Fran.

(22:04):
Everybody wants Buffalo Philly or sam Fran Philly, or Sincy
Buffalo or sinckc. So everybody's wish list looks pretty similar.
What we talked to them about is what's really important
to you. And when you talk to a partner and
they say, hey, look, here's our list, but really, even
though it's not in our top five, that game right
down there at number eight, that's really important to us.

(22:26):
For instance, if CBS were to say, you know, look,
I know it may not be the game that projects
to do the highest viewership of the whole season. But
those two teams, there are teams, and we announced one
today since Kansas City they're going to play in week seventeen.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
I feel like that should be on CBS, that should
saw it.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
But as you can imagine, NBC and ESPN and Amazon
and everybody else will say, hey, can't we get a
bite to the Cincy Casey. So it's a balancing act.
If CBS gets SINCKC, then maybe somebody else should get
KC jets. And if somebody got KC jets, then somebody
else should getjets.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Out Buffalo or Buffalo CAC.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
So rather than lock those in one and say you
get this, you get this, you get this, go, we
say from this pool of top three, top five, top eight,
top fifteen, everybody should get their fair shake. Everybody should
get their fair bites to those apples. And then you
let the computer kind of spin around on those seed
schedules and then inside out, here's a skeleton solve around it.

(23:25):
Finish schedule? Is this our best one?

Speaker 1 (23:27):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Let's see read it team by team, network by network.
What could we improve? What should we never see again?
What do we like and maybe we should kind of
lock in and go down that rabbit hole. And that
process is all day, every day, over and over and
over again. We meet with the networks right around Super Bowl,
the teams all get to submit their wish lists, and
then frankly, we kind of close and lock the door.
At that point, that's enough input, that's enough interaction, that's

(23:50):
enough feedback and opinions. We got to get to work
and we start grinding through the space.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
You know. It's it's funny because we released the schedule
in May and we dissect it ten I remember last
year I went back in my notes and I was like,
Rams Packers Night Football. I think it was Week sixteen,
and I'm like, that's the game of the year. Yep,
that's get fifteenth, that's the game of the year. Ended up, obviously,
Stafford gets hurt, Cup gets hurt, the Packers are listless,

(24:16):
but they beat the Rams and what was a forgettable game.
But we get so worked up about those late season
games now that we might not realize that that game
might not even be that significant when it matters. And
I remember it was Buccaneers Patriots, and I think, when'd
you guys put those Tom Brady. Going back to five,
we put a week three, I want to say, week four,
week four, and I remember talking to you about it,

(24:37):
and you're like, you know what, God forbid? What if
Brady gets hurt? We got to get him on the field.
So like, I'll, I love all the conversations you're having,
and it might not be easy for the naked eye
when you look at it to determine what game is
going to matter later the season. That's why some of
these games are put early in the season, because we
know going in, here's where the fan interest is, and
here are two powerful teams popularity wise.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
Yeah, I'll give you a great example of Philly KC
Right Super Bowl rematch.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
What do you do with this?

Speaker 3 (25:03):
We saw those two teams, they were playing an all
time great Super Bowl, and I think we all would
have felled as fans, man, let's just keep going, Let's
play another quarter. And we thought long and hard, quite honestly,
about using that game as the kickoff game. It was
the last game of last year, first game of this year.
Let's pick up right where we left off. But you
could also see how Philly Kansas City might be one
of those games you could save until December. You got

(25:24):
to figure both of them are in the mix. And
if you could put that in a national window in December,
with maybe a couple of one seeds on the line,
what a great use of that asset. Maybe you kind
of put it right in the middle, then split the difference,
not too early, but not too late that everybody forgets
it as a Super Bowl rematch, and not too late
where maybe one or both have clinched or eliminated, or
somebody's hurt. But not too early because we want to
make sure they re establish themselves as conference superpowers. So

(25:46):
every one of those games, that same conversation, two hundred
and seventy two times, what's the best use of this
game for our fans? Where would they most like to
see this game? And like we said, we've announced in
CKC in week seventeen. Some of us were a little hesitant,
a little worried that maybe you waited too long to
put that game on the schedule, one of us at least,
And we'll go back and check our notes at the end.

(26:08):
You know, I love it there, I really do. I
can't wait to see me too.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
I also think New Year's Eve, everyone's time right apart.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
That's great, let's go. I love that one there, but
there's others, like you said that maybe belong a little earlier.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
You know, you can tell me what can you tell
me what the number one game was? Or is that
violating some trust the game that the that like all
five networks came together. We're like, if we can get
any game, it's this one.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
Yeah. The truth is this year, of all years, I'm
not sure there was a consensus number one. Okay, that
was both good and bad for the scheduling team. There's
a lot of juicy apples on the search tree this year,
so certainly Cincinnati, Kansas City's got to be near the
top of the list. The Super Bowl rematch, Philly, Kansas
City's up there. Obviously, once Rogers went to the Jets,
that casey Jets game became a monster because we never

(26:52):
got Rogers mahomes last year. So hopefully we're going to
get Rogers mahomes this year. And a good example of hey,
should you wait too long to use that one? Since
we waited one week too long to use it last year.
Jets Dallas, both Dallas, Phillies, both Jets, Bills San fran
Philly Dallas Buffalo. Man, there were so many really really

(27:14):
good games and some that just sound like really good
football games that maybe aren't necessarily going to crack that
top ten list. One of the ones I like more
than any Maybe not more than but one of the
ones I like a lot is Bill's Chargers.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
I just love that game. I know, justin Herbert.

Speaker 3 (27:31):
Maybe on Sunday night football that doesn't do the twenty
five or twenty eight million that another game might do.
But it felt wasteful not to put that game in
a good way.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Where is that Buffalo or La.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
It's in La.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
That's cool. That's cool.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
And it was a lot I'm not sure there was
a astis number one, and that made our jobs, you know,
both easier and tougher to a certain extent.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, I love an analogy or a statement that you
made years ago to me. You said, it's both a
science and an art Can you explain the schedule making process,
the scientific part of it and then the artistic part Again.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
I'm lucky enough to go all the way back, really
to the beginning, to the godfather of NFL scheduling with Pinchbeck.
We used to sit in that room with a peg board,
and we would hang these games up one at a time,
and literally every decision was made from one older gentleman's gut.
Val thought that this sounded like a good game, or
this was a good time to start this division series,
or that team will like playing in you know, this

(28:23):
window on this week, And so much of the schedule
came out of, you know, one man's gut. And there's
always going to be some of that, the transition from
Val to Dennis Lewin to Glennadamo to Howard Katz for
these last fifteen years, I don't think we ever want
to take away, you know, the gut feel of these
industry legends. I mean, Howard Katz ran ABC, forever, ran

(28:45):
NFL film. Right. If there's one guy who's gut we
could trust, I think it's Howard's. That being said, I
think we can help them a little bit with some
of the analytics, some of the predictive stuff, some of
the data, some of the math and science. Where Okay,
I get that you think that's a big game and
maybe it feels right in week three or week four,
but you know what, mathematically speaking, it might actually help
the schedule if we put it in week six. Or

(29:07):
week seven. So before we lock it in, why don't
we just give it a little range and let the
computers help us decide. Okay, big asset, deploy it here,
but also be willing to deploy it here, here or here.
And like we were saying before, if you put Cincinnati
Kansas City on CBS, then you should probably put Buffalo
Cincinnati somewhere else. And if you put Buffalo Sinci here,
you should put Cincy Sandfran somewhere else. And if you

(29:28):
put Cincy sandfri In here, you should put sand f
in Philly somewhere else. You can use the data, you
can use the predictive analytics to really kind of figure
out the right way to deploy each of those assets
so that all of our television partners, all of our fans,
all of our teams feel like they were treated fairly.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Yeah, is there a team this year? And we're going
to get the schedule within twelve hours so it might
be moot asking now, but Sarah a team this year
that you guys were hot on. I remember last year
Denver had a bunch of primetime games early it didn't
work out, and you know whatever, it's even them becoming
a question mark team almost came more intriguing because it's like,
what's going on with this squad? But remember there was

(30:04):
an Amazon game against the Colts. It was obviously the
Monday night opener. There's a lot of Broncos early on.
Is there a team this year? I know the Jets
are the obvious answer. Is there another one that you
guys are like, hey, and I would think Detroit.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
I would imagine, yeah, Detroit's a good one. Detroit's a
good sort of you know, the last time we saw them,
they were well, winning eight of nine, and they went
into Lambeau and ruined the Packers season. I would think
we're going to see more Detroit on national television. You're right,
the Jets are the obvious answer. You know, I'm not

(30:37):
sure there's anybody that we could point to and say
that's the one team that we're betting on more than
any other. I'll give you one. I'll give you one
because it's maybe not necessarily indicative of their record from
last year. I'll go with the Chicago Bears. I think
that interesting. The fact that they were a three win
team last year generally means you're heading for a lot
of Sunday noons starts, but in that division now maybe

(31:02):
a little more wide open than in the past. They
got a haul from the raft pick trade and what
do any of us know, but we keep hearing Justin
Fields looks better than ever and he was nothing if
not exciting last year when we watched him. So if
somebody were gonna look at this year's schedule and be like,
who would surprise us that they're all in on, I'm

(31:22):
sure somebody somewhere is going to say, wow, that seems
like they sure think the Bears are going to be good,
And yeah, I kind of hope they are.

Speaker 1 (31:28):
It's interesting. I was listening to Andrew Marshand and John
Ouran's podcasts from this week and they were talking about
how when the Bears are good, NFL ratings send me like,
that's an underrated market that Chicago, I know, is number
three in the media market thing, but you don't think
of Chicago the same way you do maybe New York.
But the Bears move the needle.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Yeah, Look, there's a lot of those teams. There's you know,
call them dormant fan bases or whatever you want to
call them. But you know, it wasn't that long ago
when the Dolphins were a top rand. I feel like
the Raiders have a national following that's just kind of untapped. Look,
it's great for the NFL when Dallas and Kansas City
and San Francisco are good. You know, it's good for
the NFL when the two New York teams are good,

(32:08):
when the two LA teams are good. So some of
this is a little bit of serendipity, a little bit
of good fortune. And look, like we said best laid
plans in May, the season doesn't even start for four
more months. None of us know anything all our best
laid plans. You go back and check your notes, and man,
sure enough, somebody you thought was gonna be good kind
of fell off, and somebody you never saw coming is

(32:28):
going to be the story of the season. Some rookie
we haven't even seen yet, who's going to be you know,
somebody's going to be the rookie of the year. And
it's one of the best and worst things, quite honestly,
about this job is you're guessing you really are. These
are all guesses we're hoping, we're imagining what it could be.
You rely on the things you can rely on, and
then you kind of cross your fingers and take a

(32:49):
risk on some other things.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
I live in an NFL is King world where my
viewpoint is NFL first, everything else, seventh, eighth, ninth. But
I remember a couple of years ago, Peter King did
a wonderful article after the schedule came out and said,
you know, Taylor Swift having a concert tour impacted some
of the dates of the NFL schedule because they didn't
want to boot Taylor Swift's fans on a Sunday, or
they couldn't because there's a contract involve Is there any

(33:12):
concert tour a bad bunny, a Taylor Swift that's going
on in the fall?

Speaker 3 (33:15):
Taylor Taylor's on the road, Beyonce is on the road,
Pink is on the road. Morgan Whalen's on the road.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
I hope you feel his voice back.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
Black Pink is on the road. I know Black Pink
is coming here in August. There's a lot. Look, it's
been a while since the concert business has.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Their back concerts right and better than ever, I mean.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
And to a certain extent, Oh, how could you do this?
You're jeopardizing the integrity of the NFL schedule. We can't
work around all these blocks, But this is part of
what we do. We try to thread that needle. And
you know, maybe it's a rock concert, maybe it's a
college football game the day before and we're worried about
the field conditions. Maybe it's a NASCAR race or a
golf tournament. We're trying to as part of the interaction

(33:57):
with the clubs, like we said in January and February,
tell us what we need to know. And part of
it is, well, we got some other events going on
in our building, and part of it is, oh, and
we don't want to play in Florida and September, and
we don't want to play in Lambeau in December, and
you owe us a mid season by you know, those
all just kind of go into the stew. They go
into the software. You just give it a stir and
you keep hoping that the winner kind of solves all

(34:18):
these things that you can. Is it perfect? Never? But
if you need Taylor Swift tickets, just call me.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
Okay, yeah, oh well actually that might be ending you up.
Don't laugh. The broadcast partners, of course, have their requests,
and you just mentioned part of the stew being the
teams having their certain requests. How do you weigh those
because I could see certain teams saying I don't want
to play the Miami Dolphins in September, or another team

(34:48):
saying we actually would prefer to have more home games
up in Buffalo in December than in September. It's a
home field advantage, yep, whatever it is, how do you
factor all that? And with the broadcast partner saying, hey,
we actually want this game at this point, if you
can possibly give it to us, that would be greatly appreciated.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah. Look, each team is kind of a microcosm of
that same conversation that we're having here at the league
office here when we build the schedule, you could make
arguably the perfect television schedule whatever that means, nothing but
Dallas and Kansas City in primetime and television windows, you know,
all seventeen weeks of the year. If you're going to
do all that over here, then your team competitive issues,

(35:27):
you're probably going to be a little less fair than
you would hope to be. You could do it the
other way. You could make great team schedules, every team
home away, home away, home away, mid season. By you're
probably not then going to make your best television schedule
so somewhere between those two extremes, we're looking for that middle.
Every team is having the same conversation internally. You know,
we mentioned going to Florida in September. On the one hand,

(35:48):
you know, if you're the vice president of ticketing or
the vice president of marketing, you say, and you know,
hang on a second, it's one hundred and five degrees
in the shade. Can we please play our games at
four o'clock or eight o'clock or even on the road
in September. Whereas, if you're the head coach, this is
a home field advantage for you.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
It's a huge event.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
You're Miami and you got Buffalo coming down to Florida.
Do you want to let them out of that you know,
hot weather game. You know, every team's got to make
that decision. And to your question about you know, give
me all the home games you can give me in December,
but the weather might be bad and the fans might
not show up, and heaven forbid, you're five and ten.
Then you're gonna have a time time putting you know,
bodies in your building. Whereas, hey don't put too many

(36:27):
games in December, so I don't have too many to sell.
Then your coach turns around and says, hey, wait a minute,
why does this schedule have so few home games for
me when I'm in a playoff chase. So every team's
got to kind of strike that balance, and then we've
got to take that input from all thirty two and
kind of apply it globally and again kind of find
that right balance between competitive fairness and maximizing, you know,

(36:47):
television viewership. It's less about maximizing viewership than it is
about getting the right games to the fans. We're not
doing our jobs if the best games are buried in
one o'clock windows and only available in fourteen percent of
the country. So can we spread them around? Can everybody
see the games they really want to see? And can
every team again feel like we heard them on what
their requests and their preferences were, or nobody gets everything?

(37:08):
Hopefully nobody feels like they got nothing.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Yeah, and then there's this international aspect now where now
you have five games in the nine thirty am Eastern window.
I personally work on the Fox pregame show at eleven
am Eastern, and I could tell you our ratings were
down those five Sundays. Do you hear from the broadcast
partner saying, well, now, wait a second, how about this.
We have these pregames with these and I'm obviously on
both sides of the fence because the game's are on

(37:31):
NFL Network sometimes and I'm a member of that crew also,
But I feel like we've got so many different mouths
to feed now that there are some things that are
going to come up that is conflict.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
Yep, that's what Howard Katz says all the time. So
many mouths to feed, and you can't keep everybody well fed.
You're gonna have somebody who's a little disappointed somewhere along
the line. And like you, you know, you wake up
the morning of a London game and maybe you click
over to your pregame show and then you realize, oh man,
there's a live football.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
It's a game.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
Well click right, we got to go watch the game
when it's on. So yeah, it's not ideal certainly for
our pregame show or our partner's pregame shows, but any
chance to get live football, and for those who have
traveled over and played internationally. Again, you talk about television
ratings versus competitive fairness when you go over to London
and you play in the evening over there, so the

(38:21):
here's in the afternoon over here. You get home really
really late, and you probably should take your buy the
week after just because of the body clock and the
miles in the air. And if you're playing a week
four London game, you're essentially volunteering for a week five bye.
And it's a long season. I don't think anybody's putting
their hand up for a Week five by somebody's gonna
get it happens every year, but it hopefully moves around

(38:42):
a little bit and nobody's volunteering for it. So if
you're playing over there in the afternoon to play over
here in the morning, you play in the afternoon over there.
If you're an East Coast team, you're back in your
facility midnight one am. That's probably earlier than if you
played at Seattle or San Franciscure Sunday. So you know,
there's trade offs, there's balances. I think our clothes have

(39:03):
gotten really really good at managing the London and you know, well.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
I still think it's fascinating. There's different strategies. We were
in Germany last year and the Seahawks they're there and
I believe it was either the Seahawks were there for
several days and the Bucks just showed up the day before,
or as vice versa. But the fact that there's still
not a tried and true strategy is fascinating to me.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
It also depends on where you're coming from in the States.
We talked this year to San Francisco and the Chargers.
They did not end up going over to London as
a visiting team, but they had at least ran the
traps and thought about how we would want to do this,
and they both asked for the same thing. If you're
going to send us to London, bring us to the
East Coast the week before, and we'll play in Philadelphia, Washington,

(39:42):
New York, New England, whatever, and then we'll go over
from there as opposed to Seattle. Last year. Didn't do that.
They stayed in Seattle and they flew to Germany. I
think they went up over the North Pole, and they
treated it more like, you know, a regular trip. I mean,
Seattle has long trips every week, so they're used to it.
Every team treats it differently. Everybody's an expert, nobody knows

(40:02):
for sure, and sometimes you win a game you're not
supposed to, and sometimes you get beat. Even though everything
worked out exactly the way you would hope leading up
to it. Nobody knows anything. It's a beauteous league. Mike.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
How long you've been working for the.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
NFL season twenty eight? For me? I believable, big shield,
love life. He still let me in the building. No,
let's me too work on such an important project. I'm
so grateful, so humble, work with so many smart people.
And again I'm old enough to remember how we used
to do this. The miracle, honestly, Peter, isn't that we
get fifty thousand or one hundred thousand schedules done today.

(40:37):
The miracles that we ever got one done by hand.
I can believe how this league somehow survived that inefficient,
suboptimal process. But it's just proof that, you know, the
game is the thing. Try as we might, we can't
screw it up. And try to just stay out of
the way and make good decisions and make a fair schedule.
Hopefully that everybody feels, like we said, just a little

(40:58):
bit disappointed by and that's probably where we should be.
And then the season starts and kind of out of
our hands and we'll react as we need to.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
When you got out of college and you were working
whatever it was you were doing when you started at
the league, what was your first job, and how did
you get to this position? Because I think it's one
to one. It's one of the coolest deals, and I
know your passion for it. You love it, and it's
like me with my job, I love it. We're very blessed,
we're lucky, Like it's cool that we can do what
we want to do. And I know a lot of
people who love your passion for it, which makes it

(41:28):
so much fun for them, Like talking about the schedule,
because it's like, yeah, Mike and his group, like they
absolutely live and breathe and this is not work, this
is a passion. How did you get to this? And
was this kind of a goal like I'm gonna make
the schedule one day?

Speaker 3 (41:41):
There really wasn't such a thing. I mean, sports scheduling
wasn't even an industry back then. I mean, I'm sure
they all just did it with like index cards or dominoes,
like we used to see those old pictures of Burt Bell.
I'm a much bigger look. The constituents have gotten a
lot smarter you know, can't beat around the bush. The
money's gotten a lot more. So you know our partners
that they're owed a better process, no toys around it.

(42:03):
So I got really, really lucky. I'm at a total
stranger at a New York Rangers game one day, is
that right, total stranger.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
Adam Graves, you know, just Jeff Booker Boom and you're
just there.

Speaker 3 (42:13):
Even longer ago, earlier ninety four, So I met a
stranger at a hockey game. I was working in advertising
at the time. I said, love to get into sports.
She said, my aunt just got a job at the NFL.
That's amazing doing what I don't know, but give me
your resume. I'll fax it tour. Two weeks later, had
the job. I fell blind, dumb luck.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
Back home, Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
Job.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
And it was when the NFL was launching its website.
So you probably heard this story. Wasn't even at NFL
dot com because someone wasn't at NFL dot com.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
NFL dot Aol dot com wasl home dot com as
a podiatrist in Chicago had registered NFL dot com under
his product no foot Loss.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
I don't know the story. It couldn't.

Speaker 3 (42:56):
We couldn't even get NFL dot com. In the early days,
we were at NFL home dot com.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
Damn foot amputation business was keeping us.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
I kind of got this wrap around the building is
the computer nerd and Ashpec was shifting the scheduling process
from manual. He used to lock himself in a room
with Joe Ferrera and Dick Maxwell and you know, really
some some legends of NFL.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Lore a bunch of pistachios, right.

Speaker 3 (43:22):
Yep, yep. When they were when they were gonna try
to automate the process, they needed a nerd. They needed
a computer nerd. They had one on the fifth floor
who was doing you know, the new website. And so
I got really lucky, got the job and have been
to talk about, you know, Charlie and the chocolate factory.
What do you the kid who got everything he ever wanted?
Man so lucky. You get to work with all the smartest,

(43:43):
brightest people, all so respected, so smart legends, and to
think where the process has gone to and what it's become.
It is. It is a labor love. It's twenty four
to seven, it's fourteen weeks. It's it's everybody, it's all
hands on deck and we are down to the minutia.
It really is like, should this game be on this window?

(44:05):
Because if it is, you know, it's not going to
air in Los Angeles? Or is that right that this
Titans game can't be seen in Houston? And if the
Houston Texans are playing and the Cowboys are playing, that's
not really fair to the fans in San Antonio. And
really trying to get that search all that specific about
every window, every game, every television partner. The analytics play
a huge role. Again, you go back to what we

(44:26):
talked about at the beginning. Never want to distrust, you know,
Roger Goodell's gut. There's a reason the guy's you know,
running the company. I trust everything he says and I'll
do whatever he tells us. But if we can supplement
some of that gut and feel and instinct with math
and science and predictive analytics, that's probably going to get
us to a better place at the end of the day.
And then, like you said, season starts and all bets

(44:47):
are off and you know, best laid plans right in
the garbage, and you just react and you adjust, and
that's what flexible scheduling is for. And the Saturday TVD
pools and we'll do the best we can and play
the cards that are dene.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
Couple more questions and I'll let you leave because I'm
assuming you haven't slept in days. This is for the
regular season. It's important. I would think that the night
the regular season ends and figuring out which networks get
which playoff games is a far more contentious time. Or
am I overstepping my bounds and suggesting that there's actual

(45:19):
arguments over who gets what?

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Again, I'm not sure about contentious, but it's definitely a
lot of encouraging, a lot of arm twisting, a lot
of raising their hands. Look, the truth is, at that point,
there's two things going for you. Number One, you've got
a regular season under your belt, so you know who's up,
who's down, who just had the big game, who you
know got a solid whether we did a flexible scheduling

(45:42):
decision at one o'clock or four o'clock, Like, you're not
just all of a sudden starting from scratch to you know,
which of the mouths do we have to feed? Is
the biggest mouth? You've got a whole regular season under
your belt, so you kind of know, you know the
roadmap to how you got here, and maybe you owe
this guy a little something, or maybe that guy's just
fine with whatever he gets. And then the second thing,

(46:02):
and maybe the most important thing is you know, now
you're talking about our best games. Literally, you're talking about
playoff games, right, so every one of these games is
a valuable asset. And look at how the playoffs have
gone these last two years, with that incredible divisional weekend
from a couple of years ago, the unbelievable comeback on
wild Card weekend last year. You know, generally speaking, the
cream rises to the top. And you know if your

(46:24):
CBS or Fox and maybe you didn't get exactly the
game you wanted on wild card weekend, well you know
that you're getting the winners of this weekend. Yeah, on
divisional weekend, and CBS and Fox are always sitting there
with a championship game, so you know they're getting you know,
the two best teams in the conference. And then whoever
has the Super Bowl. On the one hand, you know
they've got you know, the big win at the end,
So maybe you don't need to feed them all the

(46:44):
way along, but you also want to kind of build
that momentum for that network, and everybody just get used
to you know, Fox, Fox, Fox, weekend after weekend. So
like everything else, it's a balancing act. Everybody raises their hand.
It's a zero sum game. Anything good for one is
a challenge for another. But hopefully over time, whether it's
over a few weeks or a few seasons or ten years,
everybody feels like at times they've got and you know

(47:07):
that they've been heard and they've gotten, you know, they've
they've gotten. The needle has tilted toward them just a
little bit this time.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
I've got a buddy, Mike, who's a forty year old guy,
grew up with me. He loves the schedule, he loves
the broadcasting stuff. Every year before the playoffs, he like
tries to predict, like, all right, this is a CBS division.
His question to me to ask you was, we know
FlexIt scheduling. You guys play a major role. We know
that during the playoffs, you guys determine who gets what

(47:35):
game For the most part, what do you, Mike North
do once the schedule comes out up until like week ten,
Like what's the panic? Panic? And just let's make sure
that disaster.

Speaker 3 (47:46):
I'm watching I'm watching every game thinking about the impact
of the outcome of this game on week eight, Week ten,
Week fourteen, Week sixteen.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
Because we made a promise to Amazon that hey week thirteen.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
Honest but look, we put this schedule out in May,
and you know, we didn't put it out with an
expectation that we were going to have to flex out
of anything. Every year we play schedule that we hope
and pray that we could play, you know, as it lies,
and always start thinking literally a week one, uh oh,
anybody who lost in week one? Oh no, there goes
the Are we gonna have to flex out of them
in week six, week eight, week twelve?

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Should we start course some injuries, you probably get sick over.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
So, honestly, the broadcasting department our job. After we make
the schedule, we get a little bit of a break,
we catch our breath, get some sleep, but we're right
back at it. By about mid July, we're doing seminars
with our network partners. The teams are back in camp
like the season will be here soon enough. And once
the season starts, our job as a broadcast group is
to work with the television networks and make sure, you know,

(48:44):
let's tell the right stories, let's have the right camera angles.
Let's make sure the highlights there, Let's run the commercials
at the right time. These games are overlapping. We should
do this now, and do this in five minutes. And
this game's out of hand, we should transfer the audience
from this game to that game. So our group is
always working with the television partners, and you got to
get through each game at a time. But I'm always like, oh,

(49:04):
please nobody get hurt. You know, no no disasters, no
team that's you know, owing something like, please get a win,
just like I want everybody six and six through twelve weeks. Man,
I want everybody in it, everybody in playoff contention. I
know that again that's maybe not good for our broadcast partners.
They like dynasties, they like big brands, but man, I
want I want everybody in it. I want everybody alive.

(49:25):
So I'm always rooting for the team that's behind in
the standings, and I'm always rooting for the team that's
behind in the game and hope that they all come
out and everybody's still in it in week eighteen.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
That's the dream that phone ringing is Sean Payton bitching
about the Broncos schedule.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
If you want, you could probably leak. I also probably
put out another game.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
Donald Kelsey, that's another question, Like this whole sworn to
see like I do the NFL draft, and these gms
will blatantly lead me astray and we're friends, Why would
you do that? Like they never tell me lies, but
they certainly aren't get tipping that. Like the secrecy thing
is there like a you know, what's the word omerica?
Like amongst all you guys, Like, hey.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
Look, at the end of the day, we're all on
the same team, right, we all want the same thing.
We want the best possible schedule. We want you know,
our fans to care as much as possible about you know,
every game, every window. We want them to care about
the schedule, release show. And if here we are on
Wednesday at five o'clock and half the teams have leaked
their schedule on social media, then tomorrow night at eight

(50:26):
o'clock is not nearly as interesting. So I hope that's
not what happens. I hope the teams, you know, heck,
it's their network, right, they own it. I would hope
that they would all, you know, have all of our
best interests at heart. But yeah, no question when we
made our team calls today, you know, senior team executives
call them on the phone and say, okay, are you
at your computer. You're about to get an email from

(50:48):
the security department and you're going to have to click.
And yes, I agree and know I won't disseminate it.
And yes, only the people that need to see it
and know I promise not to do this, and yes,
I recognize the impact of my decision. The schedule gets out,
they all are, yes, sworn to secrecy and have to
make a commitment. I'm sure there's always something, you know,
like having information, and it's hard to keep everybody quiet

(51:10):
and knows such thing as a secret.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
Se If I'm you, I would get a thrill out
of like a leak thing and everyone runs with it
and then it's wrong and that's not good. Like we
did it.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
We did it. This just happened, right. That newspaper in
Germany a couple of days ago said you've got.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Hear the teams the Patriots.

Speaker 3 (51:26):
Yeah, all wrong. And all it did was make for
a couple of days of shoving the toothspape back toothpaste
back in the tube for members of the media, for
members of the team's staff people now calling and saying,
wait a minute, I didn't even know we were candidate
to go to London. Now I've got to start calling
for site visits and hotel. No, no, no, no, no,
it's fake news. Don't worry about it. You will all
find out your schedule on Thursday night at eight o'clock

(51:48):
Eastern on NFL Network. Anything you see before then, unless
we bread crumb it out, you should take with a
grain of salt.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
There's a famous David Stern story, the late great David Stern,
that he was annoyed with the leaks coming out of
fake on buildings and he sent the same memo to
all the teams and there was one word different in
every single memo, and you knew which teams. And then
it came out and it ended up being the Detroit
Pistons and whoever it was. So there was Dumars as

(52:15):
the coach or whoever it was. They stung them and
they're like, all right, you got you got a problem
with your building right now. There's like, I mean, I
love that stuff too, the subterfuge of secret and what
are we going out there? But I didn't think of
the pr and logistical nightmare that you probably deal with
when there's a false report that comes out.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
Yep, better false than true.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Yeah. My last question, what when do you know? Okay,
is it whatever Goodell says this is the deadline? Or
like if you could, would you be up doing this
till September? First? Yeah, I mean or is it?

Speaker 3 (52:47):
Yeah? Yeah, look I'm sick, so I'm the wrong turn.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
I get it.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
But the solution, spaces is infinite. And now that we changed,
like we were talking about, we changed the way each
of these games are allocated. It used to be if
you're the AFC team and you're on the road, that
game belongs to CBS. And if we wanted to take
it for Sunday Night or Monday night, then you're literally
taking it away in the network contracts takeaways, and so
we had to manage which games and how many games

(53:11):
we took away from CBS and Fox. When Hans Schroeder
and the rest of the team negotiated the new TV deals,
they got rid of that. So every game is a
free agent. So the good news is we have a
lot more flexibility. The bad news is we have a
lot more flexibility. I mean, we weren't seeing maybe one
tenth of one percent of the solution space before and
now every game can go anywhere. So the time that

(53:33):
it took for the computers to grind through the beach
looking for the best grain of sand every night definitely increased.
And the likelihood that we were going to find a
better schedule tomorrow, and a better schedule tomorrow, and a
better schedule tomorrow at some point, better's the wrong word.
Now it's just flavors. It's vanilla or chocolate, but it's
all ice cream. So to the Commissioner's credit, I mean,
you know him better than most. He is never satisfied.

(53:56):
He will never ever let you say you're done. He'll
never ever let you say this is the best we
can do, because you don't know that's true until you
beat the hell out of yourself for another month. So
you know, the SICCO and me would go another month.
I'd love to know if there was one out there
that didn't have that three game road trip, or maybe
didn't quite have that sequence of Monday, Sunday Thursday for somebody,

(54:18):
or maybe there was another way to maneuver the London
games with the buy the week I mean maybe maybe
I don't know but I would have loved to find out.
And so that's part of the reason why we didn't
even confirm May eleventh until just a day or two ago.
We let the computers run all weekend, and we met
with the commissioner on Monday afternoon, and it was it
was four thirty at night, really four thirty in the

(54:40):
afternoon before you let us get out of there with
all right, if you're sure, this is the best you
could do. And it was hard to look him in
the eye and tell him this is the single best schedule, Commissioner,
I would bet my life on it, because I wouldn't
There is surely one out there. I just don't know
if we would find it in another week or two
weeks or a month. And at some point we do
have to go. The teams need to make plans, They
need to book their buildings, their chargers, their hotels. Fans

(55:03):
want to buy tickets. I can't tell you how many
people have asked after playing The Raiders, they want to
get their flights.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Now that's the game? Why is that? Why is it
Jets at Risk Vegas thing for work?

Speaker 3 (55:12):
I mean, if you're gonna go to the road game, isn't.

Speaker 1 (55:14):
It probably fifty different people either text me or be
I'm on the street and they know I work for
the NFL in my neighborhood, and everyone is asking you
about that game. When is Packers? When is Jets Raiders
in Vegas? Fascinating?

Speaker 3 (55:26):
Fascinating? So we got to go at some point. I
appreciate very much that everybody's you know, so eager and
so interested. I can't believe how many you know, how
much people care about it. I love talking about it.
I love the pursuit of this, you know, impossible pursuit
of perfection or whatever you call it. I don't know
that we ever find the optimal schedule every year, but
I do feel like this combination of Howard and Hans

(55:48):
and Rogers Gut with Charlotte and Mike and Annie and
Blake's math, and you put some predictive analytics behind it,
and you get the ratings team and you get the
football guys, and you get them all together, and you
just start putting data into the black box. And at
some point, here's one what do you think, Well, that's
pretty good, hanging on the wall best so far. What
would you fix about it? If you could? I'd love

(56:08):
to get rid of that three game road trip. Run
it again. Maximize getting rid of that three game road
trip coming tomorrow. Here's one got rid of the three
game road trip. What did we break? Well, we broke
them in them instead. Is it worth it? Yes, boom,
new leader worth that leader survives. If that leader survives
a couple of days, a couple of really good contenders,
you feel even better about it. And we literally spent

(56:29):
the whole weekend throwing contenders at the leader and felt
better and better about it. The more contenders, the more
good contenders you threw at it. And because we had
all this extra flexibility, now those contenders they looked very different.
In the old days, these two finalists were very close.
Such some changes on the margins. But now one two,
three finalists down three different paths, wildly different. Different kickoff

(56:53):
game in Kansas City, different Sunday night, different Thanksgiving, different Christmas. Really,
those are the ten polls that we started off talking about.
Each one of them led someplace different, all good. Pick
a winner, vanilla or chocolate?

Speaker 1 (57:06):
It Yeah. Eighty degree weekend in New York City, the
first nice weekend in months, and you guys are trapped
in Park Avenue office just hammering out different schedules.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
I'd love it, thrilled to do it. They trust us,
and hope everybody likes the effort, and honestly will take
a day or two to catch our breath. But already
starting to think about twenty twenty four. It's going to
be a whole new model, all different challenges, a fewer
number of saturdays in December that we can use. The
college football playoffs have expanded, so there's going to be

(57:36):
some additional considerations there where we playing in international games
next year? Is Mexico back online? Already thinking about twenty four.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Mike, You're awesome. I thank you. You know you know
how much I love this shit and I really appreciate
you and your team. And I always say it seems
like it's a formality, the schedule, but it might be
my favorite thing about the NFL offseason, the science and
the art that goes into it, and the work that
your fine team does. The appreciate it. I think I
speak for all the fans. Thank you for the work

(58:09):
you guys do.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
Absolute pleasure, Thanks for being interested, thanks for caring, Thanks
for taking time out of your paternity to leave to
talk to us. Get back to diaper duty. All right,
my man, Yeah, I'm on it. Mike North, awesome stuff.
VP of NFL Broadcast Planning. And by the time you
guys listen to this, Mike schedule and his team schedule
probably be out in the wild and we'll dissect it
and maybe we'll have Mike on next week to go
through the actual.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
Details of it. But until next week, this is the
season with Peter Schrager and Mike North. Thank you so
much for joining us. So that was Mike North, VP
of NFL Broadcast Planning Again. Schedule comes out Thursday night.

(58:53):
I know he says that there's such a rigorous anti
leaking thing, but I usually by like one or two,
a lot of the main games start leaking out. Eric,
Is that just the geek in me that I eat
that of? Or did you as a I would say
not casual but sort of new to the in the
weeds of this. Did you find that interest thing? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Yeah, I mean there's there's so much of it that's
hard to know. And like you were saying, like that
that Rams Packers game, you know, like it looked so
good and then who would have known Stafford was going
to get hurt? Who would have known righters, we can
get hurt, and so.

Speaker 1 (59:28):
I just I also know, like the executives of these
media companies, and they're all so great, but they're also
so gung ho their company. So like CBS thinks we
should get the best games. NBC says Worstunday Night Football,
the number one show for your Fox saying Fox Game
of the Week is where everyone gravitates sort So it's
like I can only imagine when to please all those
different masters then also coming out with something that also

(59:50):
satisfies the teams. You know, there's no advantage for say
the Jets. I mean, it might be cool to be
on Sunday Night Football a few times, but to play
a primetime game every single week is not a great
advantage for the Jets. That's a whole different body clock.
And I don't know, I find it. It's it's probably
a thankless job, and yet Mike and his team do
it and they take such great pride in it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
I was shocked as he was going through You asked like,
what are the games? What's the game everyone wanted? And
he was like, there's no one game, but here are
the list of games people wanted. It was a huge list,
there's so many good games, and I think.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
That AFC is so loaded. That's why, like you noticed,
he didn't say ram Seahawks, which typically used to be
a major game, or you know, Washington Dallas. Like the
NFC is so so down the line when it comes to,
you know, fan interest now, especially with Rogers coming into
the AFC and I think Brady being out of the NFC,

(01:00:46):
I'm interested to see it. By the time everyone listens
to this, we might know some. But I'm gonna say,
if we can get Mike on next week, that was fun.
I'm going to the Nick game with Hackett. I think
he's got that beard going. Let's see if he gets
recognized or not. Aaron, good talking.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
About you too, man, See you next week. Have fun
at MSG.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
Thank you on behalf of the very handsome, awesome, intelligent
Aaron Wang Kaufman on behalf of the amazing, brilliant Jason
English at iHeart Podcasts. On behalf of Meredith Batt and
our fearless leader on the NFL side of NFL Media
and the podcast division, and Matt Schneider and the great

(01:01:29):
Jason Kleinman, who is fantastic and churns out these awesome
clips that go on good morning football and keeps everyone
aligned and on. Behalf of our music man, the great
Jack Rudd, who is the man behind the funky beat
you here. It is good to be back on the podcast.
I know I was gone for a week, but we
will be back soon. The Season with Peter Schrager is

(01:02:00):
a production of the NFL in partnership with iHeartRadio. For
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