Simultaneous games on the final day

This year for the first time, Major League Baseball scheduled all 15 games on the last day of the regular season at 3 ET (In reality, it was either 3:05 or 3:10 first pitch based on the preference of the home team.). This was largely due to the last day of the 2014 season, when the Pirates lost a 1 ET start, clinching the division for the Cardinals, who were scheduled at 4 ET at Arizona. This allowed the Cardinals to scratch Wainwright and save him for Game 1 of the Division Series against the Dodgers, clearly a competitive advantage.

In the English Premier League, all 10 matches on the final day of the season (there are no playoffs) all begin at 3pm for the same reason. In soccer it's even more important since this is Championship Sunday, not just to make the playoffs.

The NFL doesn't play all 16 games at the same time on Week 17, but it is the only week when all 16 happen on the same day. In addition, game times can move up until 6 days before kickoff, such that games that impact each other do happen simultaneously. 2014 had the most chaos involving Week 17 scheduling. There were three divisional championship games, for the AFC North, NFC North, and NFC South. I wasn't sure whether the NFC South or NFC North's game would be chosen for Sunday Night Football. The NFC South's because it was a true elimination game, or the NFC North's because it was the most competitive of the three. I thought the NFL may not want to choose this game because the loser would not be eliminated: it would be a wild card. I was right, but who knows for what reason. I hadn't at all considered the AFC North Championship Game for the Sunday Night Football because with Cincinnati in it, it didn't contain the appeal of DET-GB, but it also wasn't an elimination game since PIT had scored a playoff spot. Somehow, that was the game selected. My thought is that with the 6-day rule, the Week 17 Sunday Night Football game had to be selected before Week 16 Monday Night Football, and had the Bengals lost that one to the Broncos, then Week 17 would have been an elimination game for them, if not for Pittsburgh. So, I believe the NFL decided to pick a competitive matchup where at least one team ha a chance of being eliminated. We may never know whether this matchup would have been chosen had the Bengals not been in danger of elimination. To date, this has been the only year with multiple divisional championship games, and so the sample size is far too small to know how the NFL selects Sunday Night Football Week 17 in the case of multiple divisional championship games.

Originally, CAR-ATL was scheduled for 1:00, and I think it would have stayed this way had the Bengals lost to the Broncos, because then the #1 seed would have been still up for grabs heading into Week 17, and NE-BUF would have moved for 4:25 to be simultaneous with DEN-OAK. When this didn't happen, the NFL wanted to give CBS a 4:25 game with playoff implications, and so CAR-ATL was crossflexed and timeflexed from Fox 1:00 to CBS 4:25. My friend said he disagreed with the decision; he wanted three divisional championship games in the three different timeslots of the day, and he said SD-KC should have been flexed. The problem is, as a result of such a move, KC may be eliminated before kickoff if either BAL or HOU wins at 1:00, changing how they play against SD, which would irritate BAL and HOU who actually need SD to lose, and are counting on KC playing them hard, still being in the playoff hunt. Thus, had CAR-ATL not had playoff significance, all three of SD-KC, BAL-CLE, and JAX-HOU would have been moved.