Schedule was a fake: eaglesstats2012 comes clean
The story about a leaked 2012 NFL schedule broke very early last Wednesday morning and exploded across the Internet over the next couple of days with just about every NFL blog picking up on it and even some of the major NFL outlets posting stories about it.
The NFL came out and said the schedule was “bogus,” and they were right.
Put together by eaglesstats2012.blogspot.com, the author late Sunday night came clean with a lengthy explanation posted on his website. While it was fun taking a look at the schedule while it lasted, now we can wait for the NFL to post the authentic schedule, which is expected within the next couple of weeks.
What will be interesting is to see how closely this fake schedule mirrors the NFL’s.
If you want to visit the blogspot site, click here, but if you want to just stay here, the following is the complete posting:
Update: Time to Come Clean
As many (and I mean, many) of outlets have reported, this is indeed a fabricated schedule that I completely made up for the NFL 2012 Regular Season. If that’s all you need to hear, that’s fine. If you want to hear more, feel free to keep reading.Sidenote: Text I received: “Well, you had a good run… Now Roger Goodell is gonna suspend you from watching the first 4 games of the season”
I’m a huge NFL fan. Yes, I have a life. Yes, I have a job. In a roundabout way, I was inspired to create this 2012 schedule by ESPN’s NFL Playoff Machine (http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/machine).
I started creating my own playoffs machine, which contained all 17 weeks of the regular season from 2011. I wanted to have this basic concept completed so that when the actual 2012 schedule was released, I could quickly plug it in my template and then my playoffs machine would be available to go live.
However, I got a little over halfway done, and decided to switch gears and see how difficult it would be to create a (somewhat) realistic schedule of the 2012 NFL Regular Season and see if it would pick up any steam. This started as a small project, but I had NO idea how much work had to be put in to fit the criteria for an NFL schedule. Such as:
1. Cowboys @ Giants Week 1
2. Patriots @ Rams in London Week 8 (with Week 9 byes)
3. At least two other games between a divisional repeat game
4. No more than 3 consecutive home/away games (which my schedule doesn’t even follow)
5. Thanksgiving – Dallas home game against an NFC opponent and Detroit home game against an AFC opponent
6. No Giants/Jets home games on the same day
7. Every team having one, and only one, Thursday game
8. No Oakland Raiders home games the same day as an Oakland Athletics home game
9. Potential NFL and MLB stadiums with “shared” parking (Kansas City Chiefs and Royals)
10. NFL stadiums with prior arrangements: Obama Democratic National Convention (Panthers Week 1), Seattle Sounders (Seahawks Week 5), and others
11. NFL Broadcasting issues with San Francisco and Oakland playing same at the same time on the same network
I posted this schedule Wednesday night (April 4th) and sent out a few generic tweets to see if anyone would pick it up. Well, Friday (April 6th) rolled around and I saw the story posted onProFootballTalk (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/04/06/league-says-leaked-regular-season-schedule-is-bogus/). Immediately, I checked my blogspot and saw that I had over 54,000 page views. As of posting this update, I’m at over 83,000 page views.
While it was amazing to watch it spread like wildfire, it was even more fun to see the excitement that comes behind the release of a simple schedule. I know people pointed out the flaws in my schedule left and right (Steelers/Bengals opening stretch, Bears schedule have all the away games frontloaded in the schedule, Eagles having a Thursday game before the bye), but trying to fix any one of those flaws leads to at least 2 or 3 more issues.
I also clearly botched the 4:05pm vs 4:15pm thing, and just put all FOX games as 4:05pm and all CBS games as 4:15pm.
With that being said, I don’t envy all of the work that the NFL schedule makers have to do. If anything, it makes me respect them a lot more. I can’t imagine how many drafts they create and how many times they think everything lines up, only to find one glaring mistake. I was extremely critical of some things in the schedule last year (like Philadelphia traveling to Seattle for a Thursday game), but this experience taught me that some things just can’t be avoided.
I have so many rough drafts of my work that documents all of the steps from start to finish in making my schedule. Whenever the NFL Schedule comes out, I’ll be the first one to analyze it just like many of you will. I don’t expect the actual schedule to be anything like this at all.
But as I mentioned earlier, it was entertaining to see what this fake schedule created around the internet. NFL Message Boards being flooded with topics and messages analyzing the schedule. Every fan base feels like their team deserves more PrimeTime games.
While many websites posted the schedule, they all said it was complete speculation and should be taken with a grain of salt. ProFootballTalk is, without a doubt, my favorite website and there’s never a moment where I don’t have it up when I’m at my computer. If there was ever any doubt that Incarcerated Bob was a complete and total fraud, this proves it.
Credible websites like ProFootballTalk immediately squashed the story. Same goes for a ton of other websites.
Examples:
http://nflmocks.com/2012/04/06/2012-nfl-schedule-leaked/
http://www.prideofdetroit.com/2012/4/6/2929724/detroit-lions-2012-schedule
http://raisingzona.com/2012/04/06/possible-2012-arizona-cardinals-schedule-released/
http://www.turfshowtimes.com/2012/4/6/2930185/is-this-the-st-louis-rams-2012-schedule
http://www.yardbarker.com/nfl/articles/2012_nfl_regular_season_schedule_leaked_prematurely/10497950
http://blackandgold.com/saints/42972-2012-nfl-regular-season-schedule-leaked.html
http://www.ganggreennation.com/2012/4/6/2930218/2012-schedule-leaked
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/146527525.html
http://riggosrag.com/2012/04/06/2012-nfl-regular-season-schedule-leaked/
http://nflspinzone.com/2012/04/06/2012-nfl-regular-season-schedule-leaked/
http://www.canalstreetchronicles.com/2012/4/6/2929613/2012-nfl-schedule-leaked
http://sidelionreport.com/2012/04/06/2012-nfl-schedule-leak-likely-a-fake/
http://www.pigskinbuzz.com/2012-nfl-schedule-leak-is-probably-fake-but-is-still-fun-to-look-at-2558
http://arrowheadaddict.com/2012/04/06/leaked-2012-nfl-schedule-is-likely-a-fake/
With all of that out in the open, feel free to contact me via my twitter @EaglesStats or email me eaglesstats@gmail.com. And like I mentioned earlier, I’ll be the first one to analyze the real NFL schedule, once it’s actually available on Tuesday, April 17th at 7:00pm.
Thanks for the page views, and I’ll actually go back to publishing Eagles stats when the 2012 NFL season rolls around.