Inside the journey from 60 trillion possibilities to one Vikings schedule

Published April 19, 2019

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An article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about work by Mark Karwan, Praxair Professor of Operations Research and SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and a team of researchers that has partnered with the NFL in an attempt to make the league schedule as fair as possible looks at the pluses and minuses of the Vikings schedule.

“There are more combinations than the number of atoms in the universe,” he said. “If you try to use math to solve all of it, it won’t solve during our lifetime.” 

Read the story here.

An article on CBS Sports about controversy over the 2019 schedule the NFL gave to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which includes seven straight weeks without playing a home game and a total of 20,378 miles in travel, including to London, reports the most surprising part of it is that the NFL has been working with UB researchers to make sure that the schedule is set up more fairly. The article also appeared on MSN, Des Moines Register, Asheville Citizen-Times, Cincinnati Enquirer, Fantasy Sports News, Florida Today and Sports Headline News.