Schedule Day!

The most interesting day of the offseason happened today as the league release the 2019 schedule.  With a new team this year (Cincinnati) it means that everyone in the conference plays the same schedule, 2 games (home and away) against the teams in your conference and 1 game (home or away) against the teams in the other conference for a total of 34 games.  That means only 2 games in the Rocky Mountain Cup this year, not the 3 of the last few years.

This year the schedule makers were not kind to the Rapids.  The first 2.5 months are balanced, either alternating home and away or two home followed by two away.  After the home Rocky Mountain Cup game on May 11th though things start getting out of whack with the schedule being heavily tilted to the Rapids being at home for a while.  Between June 1st and Aug 10th the Rapids play 7 of 10 games at home.  Not surprisingly, this has to be balanced out in the remainder of the season, with only 2 of the final 9 games after that being at home.  One of those is the home finale on Sept. 29th, which means between Aug. 11th and Sept. 28th the Rapids play one home game (LA on Sept. 12th).

Not only that, but the Rapids play 2 home games each on Wednesday, Thursday (one of which is 4th of July), and Friday nights, tied for 2nd most in the league.  NYCFC has the most due to having to schedule around the Yankees, but then Colorado, Toronto, and Vancouver all play 6.  3 each of Toronto's and Vancouver's are Friday nights, which I think is for the Canadian TV contract.

The result of all that is that the Rapids only have 8 home games at their traditional 7pm Saturday time, and the last one is August 10th.  They play one home Saturday afternoon home game (the season opener at 4pm) and two Sunday games (St Patricks Day and the home finale on Sept. 29th).

Getting beyond the day of the games lets look at the spacing.  Generally we came out OK with 3 3-game weeks and a 2-game short rest week (Wed/Sat) coming out of a international break in September.  The first 3 game week is the first week of April where we go to Orlando on Saturday and then host Seattle and DC on Wednesday and Saturday respectively.  The second 3-game week is the last week of May where a trip to Philly is sandwiched between home games against Columbus and Cincinnati.  The last one is in mid-July where we go to Portland and then come home and host Minnesota and NYCFC.  All of those, with 2 of the 3 being at home, are pretty reasonable.

The big haul is in August where we're on the road for 4 straight weeks.  Between the 14th and the 31st we go to, in order, Minnesota, Houston, FSL to finish the Rocky Mountain Cup, and then to play RBNY.  That's a lot of miles in the air.  That FSL game starts the final run of 7 games which could be a murderer's row if we need points to make the playoffs.  @FSL, @RBNY, LA at home, @Toronto, @KC, Dallas at home, and finishing the season @LAFC.  Getting just 7 points and the RMC out of that run would be considered fairly successful I think.

A couple of random notes to finish the analysis off.  July 4th will be the continuation of one of the longest traditions among the Rapids fan base, Jameson Night!, as New England comes to town.  As long-time readers know I never attend the 4th of July game, instead choosing to spend time with my wife celebrating our anniversary that day, but I'll be sure to get a bottle of Jameson to the tailgate crew for that one.  The Rapids have two nationally televised games, both on UniMas, one on Sunday and one on Friday (at home).  The other Friday home game is against Vancouver, which I expect is on Friday due to Canadian television.  The non-4th of July Thursday game is Sept 12th, coming out of an international break, which is probably why its Thursday and not Wednesday.

All in all its a pretty lousy home schedule.  Some of that was forced by the newly compressed schedule this year resulting in more weekday games but a lot of it was just getting the short end of the stick from the schedulers.  I don't expect our attendance to be very good this year so its up to the die-hards to bring it every game to show our support.