University at Buffalo engineers have been doing some serious studying, but not necessarily on the topic that you might suspect. The engineers have been studying the imbalances of professional football, and as you can see in this Yahoo! Sports article, some of the statistics are raising some eyebrows. You can also read this article written by Cory Nealon that was originally posted at www.Buffalo.edu. Apparently, the disparity between teams largely comes in the scheduling of the games. Teams that end up playing more rested teams are at a disadvantage.
“Several teams, including the New York Giants and Buffalo Bills, have filed complaints with the NFL in recent years concerning the issue.”
Students Niraj Pandey and Kyle Cunningham drafted the papers* that would best offer a more level playing field for all teams. They even offered solutions that would help to correct the disparities:
· Bye week disadvantages could be eliminated.
· Disadvantages due to Thursday games could be kept “reasonably low” for each team, while avoiding undesirable road game patterns and long-distance travel in short weeks.
· No team has to play against more than two more-rested opponents per season.
· Games between divisional opponents can always be separated by at least two weeks, and at least one game can occur in the second half of the season.
· The model is stable enough to create hundreds of schedules for future NFL seasons in a matter of minutes.