Max St. John is the NFL manager of analytics schedule planning for the NFL.

He's part of the small group that works to put together the NFL schedule.

Mike North, Max St. John, a couple of others.

These are the guys that are locked in a room for several months, putting

together the NFL schedule, which came out in its entirety on Thursday night. Max

joined me on my podcast on Friday, and I started off by asking him about whether or not

the guys that put this thing together get frustrated that the thing gets leaked in the days preceding the official announcement.

Really, on the day of the official unveiling, gets leaked at times in its entirety.

I mean, most of us knew Washington's schedule in its entirety before the 8 p.m. official

league release. Does that frustrate the guys that put this thing together? Here's what he said.

First of all, thanks for having me. Great to be on. We are obviously not a big fan of the

leaks, but truth is we need to get this information out to everyone before the official release date.

So kind of going back a few days, we got final approval on our schedule at noon on Tuesday.

From there, it's kind of starting the paperwork, getting the press releases, the team schedule is ready.

The teams found out starting at 2 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon. So at that point,

they had their full schedule. They could get everything ready for for ticketing, for the social

media unveiling, all that good stuff. Thursday, we reveal it to our network partners. So there is a good,

you know, 24, 36 hours where the schedules are out. And as that kind of gets passed along, unfortunately, you know, some people are able to pick

it up and see some schedules, something we definitely try and limit, but it's just kind of

a factor of how things work in terms of just getting the teams and the networks, the games

ahead of the full release.

I guess we try and limit it as much as we can.

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