I didn't read through the whole thread, so I don't know if this has been suggested before.
What if you keep the top 10 WL teams in each conference and promote 3 teams from each new pro league?
The 9th and 10th place teams are often pretty competitive and might've been 9-7 or 8-8 and just missed the playoffs due to tiebreakers. Still pretty solid teams though and could've made the playoffs with a break here or there, maybe a result in a game involving 2 completely different teams changes the way tiebreakers are calculated. You can make a better case for 9th and 10th than for 11th and 12th who will probably have a losing record.
So you demote 12 teams and need 12 to promote, that's 3 per league. Take both conference champions, then to decide the 3rd team from the league, take the winner of the game between the 2 CCG losers. They already play on day 40, make that game mean something (since the league championship game on day 40 doesn't mean much).
Every team that promotes to WL will have to have won at least 3 playoff games. That consolation game is already scheduled, so nothing new has to be done there. It keeps quality WL teams in WL and it keeps the pro playoffs still fairly meaningful, plus it makes Day 40 important now.
What if you keep the top 10 WL teams in each conference and promote 3 teams from each new pro league?
The 9th and 10th place teams are often pretty competitive and might've been 9-7 or 8-8 and just missed the playoffs due to tiebreakers. Still pretty solid teams though and could've made the playoffs with a break here or there, maybe a result in a game involving 2 completely different teams changes the way tiebreakers are calculated. You can make a better case for 9th and 10th than for 11th and 12th who will probably have a losing record.
So you demote 12 teams and need 12 to promote, that's 3 per league. Take both conference champions, then to decide the 3rd team from the league, take the winner of the game between the 2 CCG losers. They already play on day 40, make that game mean something (since the league championship game on day 40 doesn't mean much).
Every team that promotes to WL will have to have won at least 3 playoff games. That consolation game is already scheduled, so nothing new has to be done there. It keeps quality WL teams in WL and it keeps the pro playoffs still fairly meaningful, plus it makes Day 40 important now.
Edited by choco on Aug 23, 2012 09:28:52