Generating College Conference Basketball Schedules by a SAT Solver

Major college conferences basketball matches draw millions of viewers each year. Besides team members care about the fairness of a schedule, there are also loyal fans and die-hard team followers who are upset with inconvenient shceduling, not to mention leaders of other sports, such as swimming and wresting, who have to schedule around basketball games. For instance, sportscasters might mention that that Ohio State had a tough schedule in 2002, because after playing five out of six conference games at home, they had to play four road games in a row. For a schedule to be fair, we may require that no teams play three consecutive home games or three consecutive road games. According to this criterion, several BigTen schools do not have a fair schedule in 2002 [10].