Meet the man behind the NFL schedule, on the verge of his retirement

New York Times

13-05-2025

Howard Katz had just finished his presentation to NFL coaches and general managers, explaining how he and his team make the league's schedule.
'Have you ever done that presentation before?' a coach asked him.
'Yes, but not to this audience,' Katz replied.
'You should never do it again.'
'Seriously? … Why?'
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'I always thought the scheduling process was completely random,' the coach said. 'It bothers me to know there's a small group of people who have that much control over destiny.'
For two decades, Katz has been at the center of each year's NFL schedule. Coaches and networks lobby him for perks and complain about grievances. He's the unknown planner behind every NFL fan's fall Sundays.
The schedule-making process spans from January to May, refining endless possibilities in an infinite pattern of give-and-take.
'The same thing over and over again, expecting a different result,' Katz said during a recent phone call. 'That's what we do for months.'
After the 2025 schedule is unveiled Wednesday, Katz, 75, will retire from being the league's senior vice president of broadcasting and media operations.
Sports were always a part of Katz's life, but he never pictured a career in the industry. At Colgate University, Katz was the sports editor of the school newspaper and sports director at the radio station, where he did play-by-play for the football, basketball and baseball teams.
After graduating in 1971, Katz was offered a job as a production assistant at ABC Sports. 'I didn't know what it entailed, but it seemed pretty cool,' he said. For the next year, he worked for various sporting events, including 'Monday Night Football' and the 1972 Munich Olympics.
'I figured I'd do that for a year or so, and then I'd go to law school,' Katz said. 'But I never got to law school.'
Various production opportunities followed, including stops at ESPN, where he helped launch ESPN2, among other initiatives, and a return to ABC Sports as president. In 2003, Katz landed with the NFL. Within a year, his role running the business side of NFL Films merged into leading the league's broadcast department.
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Katz's background in the television business brought a new perspective to the scheduling process, particularly as the NFL grew into one of the country's most lucrative television products.
In 2023, the league began an 11-season media rights agreement with Amazon Prime Video, ESPN, NBC, Fox and CBS worth $110 billion, nearly double the value of its previous contracts. Partnerships with Netflix for Christmas Day games and Peacock, the streaming service of NBC, followed. And, as reported last week by The Athletic, Google's YouTube has emerged as a favorite to stream its first NFL game on Friday of opening week.
In the schedule-making room, Katz's biggest impact was meshing team needs with broadcast desires, vice president of broadcast planning Mike North said.
'(Katz was) really the one that pulled everything together. He was the right guy at the right time as we transitioned from a couple of guys in a room with a pegboard to managing what ended up being $100 billion worth of media,' North said.
'The reason (broadcasters) pay the money now, quite honestly, is because Howard showed them they're going to have an opportunity to get their priorities met as well as taking care of our teams.'
When Katz started, he and his team used one or two computers to assist the scheduling process. Now, there are anywhere from 200 to 300 computers at their disposal.
The team trains the computers to think the way they do, inputting rules to reflect their wants. For example, they input a rule to avoid three-game road trips, and the computers formulate schedules that follow the criteria as closely as possible. Each morning, Katz evaluates the computers' suggestions, highlights the positives, inputs new rules to correct the negatives and begins the process again.
But it still boils down to human input.
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There's no shortage of factors that impact each year's schedule. There are international and holiday games. Schedule-making begins in earnest after the Super Bowl, but notable trades and selections in the NFL Draft can result in last-minute adjustments.
They receive personal requests, like teams asking to schedule around weddings, bar mitzvahs or previously planned vacations. There are situational hurdles like avoiding overlap with certain cities' MLB home games or concerts, which is probably the most difficult, Katz said.
There are special circumstances, too. Katz remembers, in 2015, having to avoid an Eagles home game on the same weekend the Pope visited Philadelphia. Or, in 2020, spending the entire summer planning for every what-if amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Even if it required moving a Ravens-Steelers game to a Wednesday, the league finished that season with zero cancellations, which Katz considers his most remarkable accomplishment.
'It's funny, usually at the March annual meeting, coaches, general managers, owners, will all be lobbying for something, whether it's more prime-time games, 'Don't send me here after this game,'' Katz said. 'And then by the May meeting, after the schedules come out, I'm hearing from everybody about what they liked or what they didn't like.
'People aren't bashful about that.'
Listening to requests and balancing them against what's best for the NFL is at the core of Katz's work. He has seen the DNA of the schedule change. At one point, he and his team felt strongly about putting more division games late in the season. In 2010, the league began drawing up only divisional games in the final week of the regular season.
'That was a central moment in the scheduling process,' Katz said. 'Once we did it, we said, 'This really works. We should never go back.''
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More changes could be on the way, too. Commissioner Roger Goodell has expressed interest in expanding to an 18-game season, which would further complicate the scheduling puzzle.
'As a fan, I love it. If I can swap out a preseason weekend for another regular-season weekend, and if we do end up adding a second bye for every team, you're talking 20 weeks of NFL football instead of 18,' North said. 'As a member of the scheduling team, it's daunting.'
Katz's work earned him induction into the New Jersey Sports Hall of Fame in 2014, and he was the 2022 recipient of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award. At this year's annual league meeting, Goodell recognized Katz in front of team executives, who gave him a standing ovation.
'It really means a lot to me, because I put my heart and soul into this,' Katz said. 'To know that whatever I did was appreciated goes a long way.'
The future for Katz is still being decided. He grew up a New York Giants fan but has spent the last 23 years impartial. He took his grandchild to Super Bowl LIX, which made the 9-year-old an Eagles fan, but most of his other grandchildren took on the family's Giants fandom, with one New York Jets rebel.
Katz plans to find another hobby soon. His retirement wasn't sudden, and the scheduling team has slowly been preparing for this transition over the past few years. Executive vice president of media distribution Hans Schroeder now leads the scheduling team. Nonetheless, North feels confident that if they have to call Katz up with questions, he'll answer.
But first, it's time for Katz's final reveal.
'There are an incredible number of really strong games (on the 2025 schedule); games that Howard would say 'Sounds like a football game,'' North said. 'And so we've got an opportunity here. Yes, we're spreading ourselves a little more thin, adding in streaming partners, more days of the week, Christmas, Black Friday, Friday night in Week 1 and more international games.
'There are definitely more mouths to feed, but it feels like we've got a real buffet on our hands for the 272 (matchups) this year.'
(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; photo: Bobby Bank / Getty Images)