Big Ten scheduling tough on Iowa, tougher for the league

IOWA CITY - It's mid-January, yet today is the final opportunity to watch Iowa's men's basketball team play at home on a Saturday.

The Big Ten schedule sends Iowa on the road for the next four weekends, then brings the Hawkeyes back to Carver-Hawkeye Arena for a late Sunday afternoon game before Iowa ends its weekend slate in Minnesota. It's an unusual twist of computer scheduling that aggravates Iowa Coach Todd Lickliter.

“If I told you I had input, what would you think of me if this is the schedule that came out?” Lickliter said. “The only input I have is they give it to me ... You kind of get the hand you're dealt.”

The hand Lickliter and the other Big Ten coaches are dealt come from a scheduling process that lasts six months. The league hires a computer company - the same one that schedules for Major League Baseball - that shuffles a deck billions of times before the right combination comes out in the form of a conference schedule.

“Last year it took 18 days to develop the schedule,” said Mark Rudner, the Big Ten's associate commissioner who handles scheduling. “Once we have it, then we're trying to tweak it to make it as efficient and as effective as we need it be.”

Scheduling ends with Team A hosting Team B on Saturday. It begins with 22 schools, 11 arenas and 198 games that must accommodate seven core principles. The first involves strategic scheduling relating to television, ensuring the best games air at the best times. Every men's basketball game is televised in an exclusive window.

“That's sort of is the overriding principle that we use,” Rudner said. “Television doesn't dictate but it obviously has a very important role in determining our schedule.”

The other principles include:

• Each team gets at least two days to prepare for a game
• No more than two consecutive road games per school
• A balance of 4/5 weekday and 4/5 weekend games during the season's first and second halves
• A balance of 4/5 home and 4/5 road games during the first and second parts halves
• An arena cannot host a men's and women's game on the same day
• Accommodate special requests, such as concerts, premier hockey games or wrestling meets. There were 65 special requests this year

“When we get down to it, we take all of those scheduling principles and try to come up with a schedule that meets all of those principles,” Rudner said. “This schedule that we have this year meets those principles. Every one of them.

“The one thing that you're never going to eliminate is the coach looking at his schedule saying this isn't right, this isn't fair. It's the one thing that they don't control.”

That doesn't make Lickliter feel better when he looks at his schedule. Iowa has nine Big Ten weekend games, four of which are at home. Iowa's first three weekend dates - including today's game against Penn State - were scheduled at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. All three games were scheduled before Iowa's second semester begins on Jan. 19.

“We start at home with the students out, and we have a Sunday game,” Lickliter said. “It's disappointing, especially when you think about we have fans that come from quite a distance so the evening games are hard obviously. It's really important that we can have the weekend games. We just weren't given any.”

Iowa's situation is unusual but not unique among Big Ten schools. Indiana opened with three straight home weekends before playing five straight on the road. Purdue opened with two road weekend games before playing five straight at home.

“It is a daunting process, and I guess it's about this time of the year I get phone calls from coaches and e-mails from coaches,” Rudner said. “They're all sort of looking at the schedule more critically than they were back in August or September.

“We feel like we did what we're asked to do and we have a very good schedule.”