The upcoming NFL playoffs got me thinking that a team tournament with a structure based loosely on the NFL's regular season and playoffs could be really fun.... Then I got to worrying about copyright infringement, so I've made some changes. Gone are the familiar conferences and divisions, the number of regular games is different, and the bracketed playoff starts with an even 16 teams rather than 14... but the overall structure should feel quite familiar.
Tournament "League" Structure
This is a worldwide tournament so the conferences represent the Northern and Southern Hemispheres of the world. The divisions are based on the continents, with Asia split into East and West to make an even 8. Anyone may join any division, you don't have to be in the division that corresponds to where you actually live (otherwise we'd never fill the Antartic division
).Teams
Each team of two will choose a unique home "field" (map). This is where their home games will be played. The only exception is that the World 2.1 map is reserved for the championship game and cannot be selected as a home field. Each team will declare their combined point value at signup. This will be used for the "salary cap" and tiebreakers for playoff qualifying and seeding.
"Salary Cap"
In professional football a salary cap ensures that no one team can "money whip" the rest of the league. For this tournament a similar rule will apply. No one team may have a collective point value, at the time of signup, of higher than 5500 points to keep any one team from being unfairly strong.
Regular Season Play
The regular season for each team will consist of 2 games each against teams within their division and 6 games with other teams, for a total of 12 games. After each round ("week") of games, the standings will be posted. Teams will be ranked within their conference and divisions.
Playoff Qualifying
The 2 teams from each division with the best records will enter a single-elimination playoff to determine the Global Gridiron Champions after the 12 regular season games have been concluded. The remaining 16 teams are eliminated from the tournament at this time.
Playoff Seeding
Playoff seeding will follow the same process as professional football. The teams from each conference that qualify will be seeded 1-8 based on their record (see tiebreakers below). The number 8 team from each conference will face the number 1 team, number 7 will face number 2, number 6 will face number 3, and number 5 will face number 4.
Home Field
For the regular season, home field will be distributed evenly so that each team plays 8 games at home and 8 games on the road. For the playoffs, the two teams' records will determine who plays at home and who plays on the road.
Tiebreakers
For qualifying, seeding, and home field advantage the won/lost record will be used. In the event of a tie, the following procedures will be used to break the tie:
1. Wins within division - The team with the most wins within their own division will win the tiebreaker. In the event that this number is tied,
2. Strength of wins - During the regular season the point differential for each game will be tracked. The total point differential for all wins will be summed and the team with the higher number will win the tiebreaker. In the event that this number is tied,
3. Coin toss - Each team will be assigned a face of a coin (US Quarter Dollar). The tournament organizer (me) will flip the coin five times. The team whose face of the coin appears at least 3 times will win the tiebreaker.
Miscellaneous
Since I'll be responsible for setting up the schedule and the coin tosses and whatnot, I will refrain from joining the tournament myself.
I would like to encourage you to name your teams as though they were professional sports teams, but please do not choose names that are already in use in the NFL, AFL, or CFL... don't want to risk copyright issues...
If anyone sees any major issues with the rules or anything, please PM me, I welcome constructive criticism... especially since this is my first time to organize a tournament.
To join the tournament, please post with the following:
Team Name:
Division of Choice:
Home Mape:
Team Members with Current Score:
All tournament info (teams, standings, schedules, playoff bracket) are tracked here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pJVZ5t_-HT10LjnrntpWFAQ&gid=0
By the way, since I apparently forgot to mention it, the format of the individual games is:
Standard/Sequential/Flat Rate/Chained/Fog
