You have to give the Canadian Football League schedule-maker credit.

With five weeks to go in the 2013 regular season, the Calgary Stampeders lead the West Division with a 10-3 record. The BC Lions are a single win behind at 9-4 while the Saskatchewan Roughriders are another victory in arrears at 8-5.

Now take a look at a highlighted matchup in each of the regular season’s final five weeks:

Week 15: Saskatchewan at BC
Week 16: BC at Calgary
Week 17: BC at Saskatchewan
Week 18: Saskatchewan at Calgary
Week 19: Calgary at BC

In the words of Stampeders head coach and general manager John Hufnagel, “It’s on.”

The winner of that three-team round-robin will obviously be in excellent shape to at least host the West Division semifinal on Nov. 10 or, even better, get a bye before hosting the West final on Nov. 17.

It must be pointed out that the Edmonton Eskimos still have a slight chance to sneak back into the top three in the West, but they’d need to go 5-0 the rest of the way while Saskatchewan would have to lose their five remaining games.

Calgary clinched a playoff a couple of weeks ago and the goal now for the Red and White is to secure a home playoff date.

It won’t be easy. To avoid the risky scenario of counting on other teams to beat their rivals, the Stamps need to win at least four more games to guarantee a first-place finish in the West.

Thanks to a Week 14 victory over the Tiger-Cats, the Stamps are assured of finishing above .500 or better for a sixth straight year. Unless the Montreal Alouettes (who are currently 5-8) win their final five games of the season, the Stamps will own the CFL’s longest active string of winning seasons.

Last week’s result also prevented the Stamps from losing back-to-back games for the first time since Weeks 2 and 3 of the 2012 season. Calgary still hasn’t lost three in a row since Hufnagel took over prior to the start of the 2008 campaign.

Before finishing the year with four straight matchups against West Division teams, the Stamps play their final game against an East opponent this week by hosting the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Calgary is attempting to match the 2008 edition of the team as the only Stampeders teams to win seven of the eight games against the East since the CFL became an eight-team league in 2006.

By winning last week, the Stamps went undefeated on the road against the East for the first time since 1993.