Need Your Opinion on League Expansion

[Bob Davis]

Hello all,

Season 15 of my solitaire league is into the final round. There are a number of surprises in terms of the standings. I'll update the standings in another post. 

For Season 16, I had planned several months ago to add two teams to the league, the Miami Dolphins and the Tampa Bay Bucs. Then I went ahead and bought two pre-painted teams that I was going to finish painting and make them the Sandiego Chargers and the Chicago Bears. I was planning on adding them in season 17.  I recently bought two additional pre-painted teams with the intention of finishing painting them as the Detroit Lions and the Seattle Seahawks and adding them in Season 18. I also came up with a 24 team league structure which would incorporate the six additional teams. Now I'm thinking about just adding all six new teams in Season 16. 

So, the question for my electric football brothers is: Do I add the teams gradually or all at once? 

[nefgm.org]

At once. Why wait? 24 teams gives your league 12 teams in 2 conferences which can be divided into 3 divisions of 4 teams. But really just do whatever you want. It's your league. The bigger question is what is more fun and entertaining  for you?

"Just have fun and play the game."

[Curt]

Good Afternoon and nefgm is right,

 

Not sure if you are done building your league. Because building it is so much fun, I suggest building it out as quickly as possible if you are not done yet, but, what is important is how many teams in all are wanted and what time schedule for a season is desired. Some teams I have are pre-painted and some are hand painted but I have all the current NFL teams plus the Houston Oilers. The glossy enamel paints from Testors have done well for me.

When my league consisted of the current 32 NFL teams, they were arranged in their respective real-life divisions, each team playing their division teams once. The difficulties with that was determining who would host who and how to keep a season close to a personal goal of taking only a calendar year to complete. For each division of 4 teams, a total of 6 games were played. I had a 12 team tiered playoff arrangement where the top 4 division winners earned a "bye" and the 4 best of the 2nd place teams played the remaining 4 division winners to meet those top 4, giving an 11 game playoff total. With 8 divisions times 6 regular season games and 11 playoff games, the 59 total games in all required me to play a game a week with a couple of extra games squeezed in to complete my season within a calendar year. Then came my nephew who showed me an incredible adjustment I've adopted which now is do-able in a calendar year and evens things out for hosting games.

His suggestion was to add the Houston Oilers for a total of 33 teams. The first season listed all those teams in alphabetical order, filling 11 divisions of 3 teams who played each other once at home and once away so the number of home and away games were equal. That made for a total of 66 regular home games. Using a 12 team tiered playoff structure where my wildcard team, the best of the second place teams, meeting the 11th place division winner then meeting the 4th place division winner, and, the 9th and 10th division winners fighting to meet the 3rd place division winner etc. etc. etc. makes for a season total of 77 games. I give similar details in a post to "New to Forums" but this is how it works schedule-wise.

There are 52 weeks in a year which also means there are 26 two-week periods in a calendar year. If you take those 26 periods times 3 games per each 2 week period, you get a total of 78 opportunities to complete 77 games. Using a stopwatch for game timing allows playing a quarter per day [or other stops if needed] to get those 3 games done in the 2 weeks. Start New Year's week and Superbowl will then give you a very Merry Christmas!!!

But then the ultimate choice is yours. How many teams do you want? How do you want to organize them? What kind of schedule do you wish to follow? Hopefully this has not been confusing but helpful. Blessings, Curt

[Bob Davis]

Thanks Curt. Appreciate your input. I like your league structure. Mine is similar but each team in my league only plays three games each season. Didn't start painting yet, and I'm ready to start the season. So I've decided to only add Tampa and Miami for this season, #16. That will make for a total of 20 teams. I'm keeping the 6 division set-up. Two of the six divisions (one in each conference) will now have 4 teams, the rest will still have three teams. My playoff scheme is the 6 division winners and 4 wildcards making the playoffs. Division winners get a first round bye and the winners of the 2 wildcard games playing the number one seed in the divisional round. The #2 and #3 seeds play each other in the divisional round.