One of the main challenges with having no idea how many teams will sign-up is determining the number of playoff teams. The 2 options we have are to set up an 8 team bracket (and fill it) or set up a 16 team bracket and either have 16 teams in the playoffs or have byes for the highest seeds. Last tournament we had 17 teams and every team that completed 30 games made the playoffs, I'd prefer to see the regular season mean more than that. If anyone has any ideas on how they'd like it set up please post them here. If you were okay with how the playoffs were last season let me know. The one thing I personally liked were the amount of upsets in round 1, and had (for example) those bottom 4 teams not made the playoffs we would have missed out on 2 of those. Also answer this question: In an ideal world what percentage of teams would move on to the playoffs for this tournament?
50 in 50 out. That would have also stopped my brilliant idea of throwing up multiple games since if you dropped to far you'd get dangerously close to not making it.
i think its great to allow the most teams in as possible. if you start limiting it to say 8 why would some teams that know they prob will finish near the bottom even sign up? or if you limit it, you should have mini series or single game match ups for playoff spots. ex 1-4 get a bye while 5-8 play first round against winner of 9/16 10/15 11/14 12/13. you would still give the bottom teams a chance to make the playoffs. after the mini series or single play in games you would re seed so the 5 seed would play the worst seeded team and so on.
You can't guess a correct amount before sign ups so why not tier it? How about: (And I highly doubt a Pro Series happens if there are 8 or less teams) Less than 8 teams: 4 make it, no byes. 8-13 teams: 6 make it, top 2 get a bye (the NFL method). 14-16 teams: 8 make it, no byes. 17-20 teams: 12 make it, top 4 get byes. 20+: 16 make it, no byes. I personally love the bracket method, so I wouldn't change it. That being said, putting it to a vote from each team who participates might be your best bet to get a fair answer (unless tris knows a way to exclude people who aren't in PS from voting in a public poll).
I tiered it for last time but unfortunately I didnt do it as specifically as this which led to 17+ teams = 16 team bracket and we had exactly 17 teams. This is always a solid idea, just need to get the ranges and tiers correct.
