The eight-team Canadian Football League (CFL) features an 18-game regular season played between late June and early November. The regular season schedule is manually created using an iterative process between league management, teams and a television sports broadcaster. We approached the CFL about applying operations research to this particularly challenging problem and collaborated with league officials on the construction of the 2010 regular season schedule. We developed a MIP-driven decision support system that provided league officials with multiple schedule versions in relatively quick fashion. Our approach informed the development of the regular season schedule by offering league management a neighborhood of potentially solid solutions. Versions were then distributed to teams and the television broadcaster in their efforts to gain consensus on the actual schedule. We demonstrated to decision-makers the impact of specific schedule requests. Such sensitivity analysis was impossible under the previous manual creation method.
Oct. 25, 2010
Park Town Hotel
Cocktails 5:30, Dinner 6:00, Presentation 7:00
Tickets $20
For more information contact:
Kent Kostuk 244-3295 k.kostuk@fcl.ca
Winfried Grassmann, 966-4898 grassman@cs.usask.ca