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*Adam Creates Divisions for a 16 team ISFL and Also Makes 1 Joke About Bees - AdamS - 01-11-2021
That’s right, after months of no media I am back! And what better way to return than with a league altering proposal that will likely annoy a few people! Feels very on brand. So let’s get started. With expansion to 16 teams a highly likely event in the next *cough* months or so, it’ll come with the big fat wonderful thing that at least four maybe 40 people have been waiting for. Realignment. New divisions. New rivalries. Uncertainty. Arguing over how to best split the teams. At least one article about how to best do so fairly that ends up rambling into nothing and doesn’t make a lot of sense. Well not to worry. I’ve got this covered. Weather or not I end up as the aforementioned article remains to be seen. What I’m going to do is break down several options of potentially re-aligning our glorious league and show what each option would look like. To give you an idea of how I’m gonna do this the first example I use will be the most likely to be popular. That being a set up done by geography. For all examples I’ll be assigning the two new teams as the Hispaniola Privateers (because I like a team in the Caribbean) and the Vancouver Moose (because do you actually need an explanation why). I’ll be focusing on the format of two conferences and four divisions with four teams each. In all cases, I’m going to advocate that once the divisions are formed, the members of those divisions get to work together to create the division name (within reason). After that, conferences will be chosen by an appropriate committee (except for the ones where that is negated by the structure as you’ll see). I personally just think that would be a lot of fun and also really cement an attachment to those divisions, which I think will be around for a long while. So with all the hoopla explained, let’s go get started.
Geographic
Snowjob Division
Yellowknife Wraiths
Vancouver Moose
Colorado Yeti
Chicago Butchers
Sunburn and Taxes Division
Arizona Outlaws
Orange County Otters
San Jose Sabercats
Honolulu Hahalua
Crowded Airport Division
Baltimore Hawks
New York Silverbacks
Philadelphia Liberty
Berlin Fire Salamanders
Hurricane Division
New Orleans Second Line
Austin Copperheads
Hispaniola Privateers
Sarasota Sailfish
Breakdown:
So there are a few things that make this difficult right away. Berlin is closer to New York City than any other ISFL team. With those being the two most recent expansion teams it creates an immediate snag because it’s very difficult to create a location based division and separate them. Nigh impossible, even. This would remain true unless the league was to very specifically go out of its way to place two teams near Germany (which would allow the next closest city of Philadelphia to be added with the three Euro squads) or to put two new teams between New York City and Chicago, thus creating a division that way, and leaving the other in kind of a mess of Baltimore, Berlin, Philadelphia and who knows? It’s complicated, regardless.
We have several other lesser challenges based on proximity as well. In the west we have Honolulu. It’s closest location is San Jose (bet you thought it would be Orange County) so it will always be attached to the Sabercats. It doesn’t have any issues expansion wise but it is still stuck geographically. Ditto with Yellowknife in the north, whose closest companion is Vancouver. Chicago rounds out our difficulty by being kind of off by itself in the midwest. It’s not far from the big east coast teams but it’s too far to be grouped with them.
Speaking of Chicago, they ended up as the sacrificial mover to the west because it was going to be either them or Austin, and Austin simply matches up better with several other teams, location wise. If two teams went out west instead of adding Hispaniola then Chicago could slide back somewhere in the east but it would still be awkward as heck. You could theoretically go a little nuts and do a Honolulu/San Jose/Vancouver/Yellowknife division of insanity. Then you can have Orange County, Arizona, Colorado, and some mystery 4th team. Distance wise it's currently Austin, obviously. The dominoes fall like a house of cards at that point thought. A different set of expansion teams could alleviate some of these issues but not all of them. And pretty much nothing can change the New York/Berlin problem.
Beyond distance issues, there’s a few other things I’m not a huge fan of. The Sunburn Division currently holds 15 of the 26 titles in league history. That’s incredibly lopsided. On the other hand I am a fan of how relatively evenly the talent pool currently shakes out here. Three of the divisions feature several strong teams and the fourth division is the one where our two previous expansion teams got pushed together. It’s easily the weakest division but in a weird way it balances out. Brutal setup for the two current expansion teams, though. Then as a cherry on top, the conference split is wonky as well. If you go west and east, that title disparity I mentioned before gets worse with Colorado and Yellowknife adding four more. If you go north and south it's the same but worse. That and you’re pretty much keeping the conferences as they currently are, minus two teams.
Pros
-Comfortable
-Good talent spread
-Traditional rivalries in every division
Cons
-Awkward placements
-Title hoarding
-My personal bias
Alphabetical
ABBA Division
Arizona Outlaws
Austin Copperheads
Baltimore Hawks
Berlin Fire Salamanders
Chia Division
Chicago Butchers
Colorado Yeti
Hispaniola Privateers
Honolulu Hahalua
Drinking Division
New Orleans Second Line
New York Silverbacks
Orange County Otters
Philadelphia Liberty
Grab Bag Division
San Jose Sabercats
Sarasota Sailfish
Vancouver Moose
Yellowknife Wraiths
Breakdown:
This one was suggested by recent Ultimus winning GM @shadyshoelace during a discussion on this topic and here we are now. Living his dream. This one is exactly what it says, alphabetical order. I gotta say...I don’t hate this as much as I thought I would. Obviously divisions would change slightly with different expansion squads but still. This is not a bad spread. Oddly, every division also comes complete with at least one pre-existing rivalry. Presumably you’d want the conferences to also be alphabetical so I’m assuming they’d be broken up as it is listed. Which means that both divisionally and conference wise, you’d be splitting up the last two expansions plus the current one. Only one real power block would remain (Orange County and Nola still co-exist to the joy of neither). It’s kind of hilarious to me that this essentially random setup works so well.
Pros
-Very big talent spread
Cons
-Sim order issues
-Why the fuck would we actually do this
Ranked Draft
Yellowknife Wraiths
???
???
???
Orange County Otters
???
???
???
New Orleans Second Line
???
???
???
Chicago Butchers
???
???
???
Explanation:
All non-named teams are drafted randomly. When an expansion team is chosen, the opposing expansion team will be automatically placed in the opposing conference. The same will go for the prior expansion teams of New York and Berlin. If said teams are chosen to be in a division that already has their counterpart team, it will be redrawn. If all opposing divisions fill up, the last team chosen will be moved to the open spot in the division of the current expansion team and the counterpart team will go to that division. Ie, if New York is already in a division and every other division is full and Vancouver has yet to be chosen, they will be moved to the last division filled and that team will join the division with New York. Each division will end up with one of the four teams in question. The conferences will then be chosen based primarily on current balance with some eye toward historical balance. The best four teams in the league (again mostly currently with somewhat of an eye toward history) will be placed pre-emptively in separate divisions from one another for balancing purposes.
Breakdown:
So I added the explanation section now that we’re in the more creative options. Previously we were working with setups that needed none and now we’re going where we do need roads and we had better pave them, regardless of what any shady old scientists who do business with terrorists may tell you. The idea here is that you rebuild each division randomly, but with just a little separation of powers to try to make things fair. I picked these four teams because I feel each represents both a current and long lasting power team, with the somewhat exception of Chicago. I would strongly argue that they are developing that now and will be that way going forward and that of all teams who remain, Chicago is the one who should not be placed with any of the other three teams listed here. If you’d like to know why I decided that your team wasn’t, I’m not going to tell you. I’ve cleared this under the much beloved rule of “it’s my article and I do what I want”.
So with all that taken into account I’m going to run one draft this way and find out what happens. I’ve numbered each of the remaining teams 1-12 based on their alphabetical order and I’ll be picking for the divisions in the order already seen above. I’ll also snake it because you know....why the heck not? I used Google’s random number generator.
Test Run:
Division 1- 7- Honolulu Hahalua
Division B- 4- Berlin Fire Salamanders* (Division B now out of expansion slots)
Division Tres- 8- New York Silverbacks* (Division Tres now out of expansion slots)
Division Fore- 5- Colorado Yeti
Division Fore- 9- Philadelphia Liberty
Division Tres- 3- Baltimore Hawks
Division B- 1- Arizona Outlaws
Division 1- 11- Sarasota Sailfish
Division 1- 2- Austin (Believe it or not this was the first time I got repeated numbers and had to reroll.)
Division B- 12- Vancouver Moose* (Due to expansion, Austin and Vancouver will now swap divisions as Austin was the last picked. Division 1 is now out of expansion slots)
Division Tres- 10- San Jose Sabercats* (Automatically awarded as they were the last non-expansion team left.)
Division Fore- 6 - Hispaniola Privateers* (Automatically awarded by virtue of being the only ones left and this being the only spot.)
Division 1
Yellowknife Wraiths
Honolulu Hahalua
Sarasota Sailfish
Vancouver Moose
Division B
Orange County Otters
Berlin Fire Salamanders
Arizona Outlaws
Austin Copperheads
Division Tres
New Orleans Second Line
New York Silverbacks
Baltimore Hawks
San Jose Sabercats
Division Fore
Chicago Butchers
Colorado Yeti
Philadelphia Liberty
Hispaniola Privateers
Well, that was an interesting result. And it goes to show that even this method isn’t foolproof of course. As always, some longtime rival will fail to escape the Orange County vortex of pain. Sorry, Arizona and Austin. Imagine this being done on a live stream though. That would be exciting as hell. Teams finding old rivals in every division. Teams finding new rivals all at the same time like the three time Ultimus competitors in Baltimore and Nola or the two Canadian squads being together. My prior expansion franchise and my current one being swapped for each other. There’s some shit that wouldn’t have happened if I planned it. But you get the general point. Once the conferences are set (and call it a strong hunch that Division Tres is going to try to not be attached to Division B) we have a completely wide open possibility for the league going forward. And since I personally think we’re gonna be at 16 teams for quite a while once we get there (a whole different topic), these divisions will have time to build some history.
Pros
-Exciting, new, fresh, dramatic
-League wide events
Cons
-Uncertainty is not popular
Full Draft
Explanation:
Four individuals are chosen as representatives of the new divisions. These would be respected league elders like @iamslm22, @manicmav36, @37thchamber, and that kind of caliber of user. They will then randomly be given a draft order and draft their divisions one by one in a snake format. We then have a stream wherein their choices are announced one by one. They could also potentially each be randomly assigned one of the four newest teams as well.
Breakdown:
This one is a bit like the previous, but with much of the randomness removed and replaced by a more structured setup. The drama would remain as the four drafters would be trying to make great divisions and many unexpected decisions could be made. It’s incredibly unlikely to get one overpowered division as the people drafting would be specifically looking out for that.
Pros
-Same as Above
-Less randomness
Cons
-Less randomness
Single Veto Draft
Explanation:
Teams are drafted completely at random with no regards to any status whatsoever. Each team owns a single Veto. The ability to object one time to their own placement or another team’s within their division. Rules would be as follows.
A team may veto their own placement, at which point that they are placed back in the drafting pool.
A team may veto any team’s placement within any division, at which point they are placed back in the drafting pool.
A second team can counter either form of veto, which would remove both vetoes.
Once a second veto is used on an individual decision, no further vetoes can be used for it and it is final.
If multiple vetoes are used at once, the order of supremacy will be as follows: own team, team within division, random selection. Any vetoes that do not get used are returned.
Any vetoes remaining after all teams are placed can be used to veto conference placement with the same rules as above.
Breakdown:
Now, hear me out. I am aware that this is goddamn nuts. I would say to run it behind the scenes like a normal player draft with the same rules on silence and perhaps even a mock division draft before streaming the results. A team wishing to veto a pick would contact a designated HO member, making all vetoes blind. After a winner is determined, HO would inform the group that a veto has been used, and give them the opportunity to counter veto (also blind). Repeat as necessary. HO would then announce to the GMs which vetoes were used and attempted and which counter vetoes were used and attempted. With the vetoes and counters being blind, teams wouldn’t be able to sit back knowing someone else was going to step in. The amount of strategy involved would be huge and every single team would feel like they had a hand in their own fate. It’s high pressure, but also essentially free of the ability to say there was any real bias.
Pros
-Every team is involved
-Potential for bias virtually eliminated
-Amazing potential
Cons
-Stressful
-Hard to control completely
Well, here we are. My review and suggestions on how we could form our new divisions when we move to 16 teams. With so many options we could and should really start nailing down the process now in my opinion. We don’t actually need to know when or who our expansions will be to take the steps needed to at least start figuring out how we’re going to format it when it happens. I look forward to your thoughts, comments, and memes.
Why do bees have sticky hair?
Because they use honey combs.
RE: Adam Creates Divisions for a 16 team ISFL and Also Makes 1 Joke About Bees - Kotasa - 01-11-2021
Quality content
RE: Adam Creates Divisions for a 16 team ISFL and Also Makes 1 Joke About Bees - AdamS - 01-11-2021
(01-11-2021, 08:45 AM)Kotasa Wrote: Quality contentthank you
its my first one since september
RE: Adam Creates Divisions for a 16 team ISFL and Also Makes 1 Joke About Bees - Jay_Doctor - 01-11-2021
The division names in the first one instantly have my vote
RE: Adam Creates Divisions for a 16 team ISFL and Also Makes 1 Joke About Bees - OrbitingDeath - 01-12-2021
Not gonna lie, I was here for the bee joke.
RE: Adam Creates Divisions for a 16 team ISFL and Also Makes 1 Joke About Bees - Raven - 01-12-2021
Why stop at 4 divisions, when you can go 8 or heck even 16
RE: Adam Creates Divisions for a 16 team ISFL and Also Makes 1 Joke About Bees - FleshBagSoup - 01-12-2021
(01-12-2021, 04:09 AM)OrbitingDeath Wrote: Not gonna lie, I was here for the bee joke.
RE: Adam Creates Divisions for a 16 team ISFL and Also Makes 1 Joke About Bees - Mooty99 - 01-12-2021
What i learnt is that there is no easy or simple way to make divisions so best to do it then let everyone complain.