Realignment in the NHL, MLB, NFL, and NBA

Macdonald Brian () and Pulleyblank William
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Macdonald Brian: United States Military Academy, Department of Mathematical Sciences and Network Science Center, West Point, NY, USA
Pulleyblank William: United States Military Academy, Department of Mathematical Sciences and Network Science Center, West Point, NY, USA, e-mail: william.pulleyblank@usma.edu

Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, 2014, vol. 10, issue 2, 225-240

Abstract: Sports leagues consist of conferences subdivided into divisions. Teams play a number of games within their divisions and fewer games against teams in different divisions and conferences. Usually, a league structure remains stable from one season to the next. However, structures change when growth or contraction occurs, and realignment of the four major professional sports leagues in North America has occurred more than 25 times since 1967. In this paper, we describe a method for realigning sports leagues that is flexible, adaptive, and that enables construction of schedules that minimize travel while satisfying other criteria. We do not build schedules; we develop league structures which support the subsequent construction of efficient schedules. Our initial focus is the NHL, which had a need for realignment following the recent move of the Atlanta Thrashers to Winnipeg, but our methods can be adapted to virtually any situation. We examine a variety of scenarios for the NHL, and apply our methods to the NBA, MLB, and NFL. We find the biggest improvements for MLB and the NFL, where adopting the best solutions would reduce league travel by about 20%.

Keywords: expansion; mixed integer programming problem (MIP); optimization; quadratic assignment problem (QAP); realignment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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DOI: 10.1515/jqas-2013-0070

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