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We will be using the same scheduling process as was used in the NFL when there were 28 teams in real-life. The 3 years that will be rotated/used from real-life are 1979, 1980, and 1981. To keep the PSAFL and PAFL in sync, this year the PSAFL's schedule will be based on the real-life schedule from 1979. The one wrinkle is that home and away teams will be swapped in the schedule (this is due to the PAFL started using this scheduling approach 3 years ago. This year the PAFL will be using the 1979 schedule for the second time which necessitates swapping home and away teams).
The reason we switched to copying the NFL schedule was that it meant that basically every team will play every other team in the league every 3 years (note there are exceptions involving teams that consistently finish 5th in their division). This is a more robust / enjoyable scheduling approach.
Using the NFL's 1979 schedule in the PSAFL will feature the NFC East playing the AFC Central, the NFC Central playing the AFC West, and the NFC West playing the AFC Central. The exception to this are teams that finished 5th last year (Washington, Seattle, Houston, and Tennessee). The 5th place teams play the two other 5th place teams in the other Conference once and play the 5th place team in their own conference twice.
Teams in the same Conference that finished 1st and 4th play each other from the other Divisions in their Conference as do teams that finish 2nd and 3rd. 5th place teams play teams in their Conference from the Division with only 4 teams to round out their schedule.
The wrinkle is that the real-life schedules only had 16 games during the regular season. In order to keep things simple as far as balancing out home-field advantage, this year all of the AFC teams will be home this extra week. Next year the NFC will be home for this extra week. The extra game matches up teams based on how they finished in their Division last year using the same Divisional rotation that would have been used the previous year (meaning had we been using the real-life schedule previously in the PSAFL). The matchups are the NFC East vs the AFC East, NFC Central vs the AFC Central, and the NFC West vs the AFC West). This extra game was added to the first week of our schedule.
That's the process for creating our schedule. Next year we will be using to the 1980 schedule and flip the home and away teams.
I tried to double check everything but an error is always possible. Let me know if you find one.
Posted on 24 Apr 2023 by Bears
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