Hey all.
My tabletop league, the
BBLOC, is looking to shift to a relegation style format for our 4th season. I, along with 2 other TFFers, are trying to come up with some ideas for how the league will function with relegation. I thought I'd post here to see if anyone here has any ideas for (or experience with) a solid relegation style league.
Some details:
- We currently have 21 players and should be between 18 and 24 players next season.
- We currently split players up into divisions by TV and have a weighted schedule that pits rookie teams against each other to start. We would like to continue doing this
- Our season is 12 games long, plus playoffs. We'd like to keep it in the 12-14 game range
- currently, 8 teams make the playoffs and faceoff in a standard single elimination tournament for the championship
Here's what I have for a preliminary idea, but I'm not entirely sold on it for various reasons:
- Group teams into 3 divisions. Divisions A and B have 7 teams each. Division C has the rest. Divisions would be seeded by player/team records from previous season with rookie teams starting in Div C. After the season, divisions would be seeded based on where the team ended the previous season.
- To start, teams in Divs A/B play every team in their division once for 6 games each. Teams in Div C would play 6 games against other Div C teams, as determined by the schedule.
- After the first 6 games, the bottom 2 teams from A and B move down (to B and C respectively). The top 2 teams from B and C move up.
- Repeat another 6 game cycle
- Relegate/promote teams again in preparation for the playoffs
- Hold playoffs after 12 games. The Top 5 teams from A (those that did not get relegated) would take the top 5 seeds in the playoffs. The two teams that got promoted from B to A would get seeds 6 and 7. The two teams that got promoted from C to B would play in a one-game "play in" with the winner taking the 8th and final playoff seed.
That's what I've got so far, but there are a couple of things I'm not thrilled with:
- I'm not sure if I like giving the bulk of the playoff spots to Div A as it will likely be filled with the same coaches from season to season.
- We use an "open schedule" for our league which allows coaches to play a set of scheduled games in any order they choose. Currently we are flexible as to when they get completed, but we would have to have a hard deadline if we were to go with this system.
Does anyone have any other ideas for a relegation-style league with a playoff? Or have any comments/suggestions on the format I've worked on?
Thanks!
