But most of the games appear to be regional. I would think teams are looking to travel as little as possible, but still be able to face competition. We seem to always be playing Detroit, Cincinnatti, or some other team just around the corner (in terms of NFL anyway).

Since that obviously doesn’t really answer the question I’ll just guess…Maybe it’s naive to say this, but in Madden you’ve always had the option to choose your preseason games. Perhaps this is half truth? Maybe the schedule is like college – where they contact each other and see if they want to play?