Meet Trevor Hardy, the Guy Who Makes the CFL Schedule

It's the time of year when Canadian Football League fans anxiously await the release of next season's schedule. Nine teams, nine stadiums, nine cities and one carefully calculated, balancing act. In terms of what's to come in 2016, fans have something to be excited about.

Several new elements have been added to the schedule that will be released this afternoon, including the league's first tripleheader since the 2007 season and Thursday night football games for each team at their home stadium, according to the CFL's director of communications Paulo Senra.

Long gone are the days of papers covered in requests, scattered across the boardroom table at league headquarters. Instead, Trevor Hardy, the CFL's director of operations, begins the nearly five-month process with a handy excel spreadsheet and a math optimization program he created. The ultimate goal is to build a competitively balanced schedule that creates the best possible product on the field.

Sounds easy, right? It's not.

The daunting task requires Hardy to take into consideration the stadium availability for each team, special date requests, broadcast availability, protecting signature games and much more, all while keeping the best interest of players and their safety in mind.

"On September 30th, I send out an email to our clubs with an excel spreadsheet attached to it, asking them when their stadiums are available," said Hardy.

"For each week, tell me what dates you can't play, tell me which dates you prefer not to play and for all the ones you would like to play, tell me what your preferences are."

He laughed when asked about how that plan usually works out.

"The joke around the office is you know you've done a good job with the schedule when everybody is unhappy. When everybody's got the same level of unhappiness."

Once he has each party's requests, he plugs the data into his self-created mathematical optimization program and begins to lay the building blocks of the schedule. The program creates thousands of variations before he narrows it down to roughly 200 versions that have the best chance of passing. After each one is analyzed, teams will likely see four or five different templates before the schedule is finalized.

"I'm proud to say that the [2016] schedule is the most competitively balanced schedule we've had in probably a dozen years," he said.

Last year was a tough year for league scheduling with the Pan Am Games, FIFA Women's World Cup and a host of other events causing stadium availability conflicts, including Blue Jays games at the Rogers Centre which forced the Argos to play home contests at different locations. But Hardy says making the 2016 schedule was an even more difficult task.

"Going into this year I kind of had a false sense of optimism and security thinking there is no way that it can be harder than it was last year," he said.

"This year, we had a lot more flexibility and with that flexibility comes pressure to optimize the schedule for everybody's interests."

You might be surprised to learn that the biggest challenge is scheduling around different time zones across the country. Each game is given a three-hour time slot, so often there is no time for a second and it becomes tough to fit it all in, especially when it comes to doubleheaders.

"If I schedule Winnipeg on a Thursday or Friday night, that is the only game that can be played that night because a 7 o'clock local start time would be 8 o'clock eastern, it would finish at 11 o'clock eastern and I can't schedule a game before or after it."

In addition, Hardy has to do his best to ensure as many fans can watch on TV and get out to the stadium for a game as possible. So, when he can, early games on the East Coast will be clashes between Eastern teams. That way, those on the West Coast won't miss a game trying to get home from work or make it to the stadium for kickoff.

Throughout the course of the season, some weeks there will be teams with fewer rest days between games than another team. The ultimate goal is to find balance by the end of the season, with every team accumulating the same number of rest days at the end of the league's 20-week schedule. Formally, it's called marginal days rest.

"Where our business begins and ends is the product on the field," said Hardy.

"The best way that I can help ensure that the product is as good as possible is making sure that teams are well rested."

So you can add that to the list of variables that go into his handy number-crunching program.

Last but not least, the much-anticipated signature games of every season have to be protected. It wouldn't be the CFL without the home-and-home series between Saskatchewan and Winnipeg, culminating in the Banjo Bowl. Or the Labour Day Classic played in Hamilton between the Tiger Cats and Argos. The most recent addition to the signature roster is a Week 1 rematch of the 2015 Grey Cup, which will be played in Edmonton, the winner of last year's title.

So, the pressure is on.

The earlier the new schedule is released, the better, especially for patient season-ticket holders who are happy to renew once they have key dates plugged into their calendars—something Hardy is mindful of when he begins his journey in September.