The NFL Schedule is out! Start planning!

If you follow my blog, you know that I love to travel to sporting events and have been very fortunate to have been able to string together some amazing sports weekends – like Lions and Bulls and Bears, Oh My. I’ve even been able to string together an amazing week – see Football, Football, and More Football!

Normally, these events happen by chance. It starts with a single event and then turns into something bigger as I’m made aware of other events in the area. In the past, it’s been a very manual process. For example, the first thing I usually do when the NFL schedule is released is to look at the Bills’ road games to see if I can pull off a Penn State and Bills weekend. Manually checking two schedules wasn’t too difficult, but after that, it made planning a sports weekend nearly impossible. And having the ability to visually locate the games makes it much easier to plan a trip.

As they say, “Necessity is the Mother of Invention”! I’ve plotted the MLB, NCAA Football, NFL, NHL, and NBA schedules on a series of interactive maps and organized them around the NFL Weeks (Wed-Tue),

Now, I can simply look at each week and drill down where I see a concentration of games to see if I can make an epic weekend out of any of them.

Here’s how it works. Click on the links for your selected week that you’d like to explore. It will take you to the interactive map. From there, you can drill down on each location to see the actual matchups, times, and locations. Just click away! You can drag and click the map to zoom in and out to map out your weekend!

Let’s take Week 4, Sep 30-Oct 5. With the map zoomed out, I can see there are 8 events happening in and around Florida. The green indicates there’s an NFL game in the area. With multiple colors, I can tell that there are also College games (blue) and MLB (red) in the area as well.

As I zoom into the area, I can start to see the events that are taking place and their locations. In the map below, I clicked on the green pin and I can see the Tampa Bay game against KC, I can also tell that the Marlins are in town down in Miami, and the Gators, UCF, South Florida and Florida State are in town as well. By clicking each pin, you can see the details of each event.

That’s all there is to it! Sounds fun doesn’t it? Now, click on the week you’d like to explore, map out your itinerary and send it to me so I can share it with others!

Do you like the Eagles? Grab their full schedule and start clicking on the city in which they’re playing to see if the Phillies are in town.

Traveling for business? Click on your location to see what game might be happening in the area.

Are you just inspired to be a Wandering Spectator? Look for high concentrations of colors and numbers and plan an event regardless of teams.

Let’s see who comes up with the best Wandering Spectator Weekend!

I hope you enjoy it!