Should there be Divisions in Dynasty Football?

[ArrylT]

One of my goals is to play in as many formats as possible - I would like to play in more leagues with Double Headers or Triple Headers, or try an All-Play league - but that will have to wait for now.

[Orenthal Shames]

16 teams with 4 divisions of 4.

We play everyone in the division twice, first three and last three games of the season.

4 division winners get top 4 seeds. The top 2 scoring non-division winners get the 5th and 6th seeds. Has worked well so far. Makes for some fun races at the end of the year.

[ascherb]

What’s the point of divisions if you don’t edit the schedule so that you play your division mates more than once?

[Phaded]

Divisions, creates rivalries and creates a similar real life schedule.

[ascherb]

Divisions, creates rivalries and creates a similar real life schedule.

Right, but in the real life schedule, NFL teams play their division opponents twice each, so I get it.

Maybe yalls division leagues do that, but the ones I’ve been in don’t and the divisions are arbitrary and have no purpose unless you are playing division opponents more often than non division opponents.

If I have a 12 team league, with 3 divisions of 4. 6 of those games should be against division opponents, right? That leaves 7 weeks to play 7/8 other opponents. How do you guys split that up?

[Phaded]

Both of my divisions involve you playing division opponents more than once. Without that scheduling, it seems pointless - I agree.

In regards to your dilemma, I see two solutions:
- Just schedule the six divisional games; and randomly generate the one team they do not play
- If you find it important that they play everyone, ramdomly generate the division opponent that you do not play twice

[maxhyde]

We abandoned divisions once we discovered the beauty of double-headers. In a 12-team league, we can play a 22-game double round-robin schedule with everyone playing everyone else twice in just 11 weeks. That leaves us a full five weeks for the postseason, so we play a one-week quarterfinal with two-week semis and a two-week championship game. We actually figured out a way to increase the sample size in both the regular season and the postseason. It’s fantastic. I can’t imagine going back to the fluky one game/week format after seeing how well this has worked over the past two years.

I wish more guys relayed stories like this or we're open to trying double-headers and triple-headers.

I love double headers for regular season weeks. Takes some of the randomness out

[justdex]

I've got a 14 team league and we're looking at using divisions. Ultimately, seems like nothing more than saying we have divisions. We have 13 weeks and play 13 different teams. Would love to add a rivalry week into the league as well. Perhaps have 3 rival teams or just one rival and mid season have a rivalry week. Not sure how to make it worth while though.
Considering adding divisions and upping the buy-in so there's another method of a pay out. Currently highest scoring team gets money back and winner takes the rest with a couple progressive building pots (back2back champs and first to beat every team during reg season).
Any fun ways leagues use divisions? Any creative uses of rivalries or how to determine your rivals?

[Paul717]

We have 16 teams, and 2 divisions. We play each division "rival" twice and each team from the other division once, for a total of 22 games over 13 weeks. After creating the schedule a few years ago (which is not trivial, by the way, for this format!), I got cute and tried to create a "rivalry week" by swapping a few games here and there. The rivalries were legit because this league has known each other from high school / college and is ~20 years old.

Long story short; I botched it somehow. One team was set to play THREE games one week instead of two, etc. It wasn't realized until after the Thursday night of Week 1, either. Led to a lot of anger directed my way, lol. I haven't found a "schedule bot" that fits this exact schedule format.

The lesson: If you attempt to create a rivalry week, be careful not to botch the schedule. As far as how to determine rivals...if you don't know the league mates you could pair up frequent trade partners perhaps? Or, look at close games or playoff games from prior years.

[moishetreats]

For me, divisions are only necessary to accommodate scheduling (e.g., 12 teams, 13 weeks; etc.). In leagues where the scheduling doesn't need them, like in your situation, I do away with them entirely.

[bjd5211]

No need for divisions in a 14 team league imo, just play everyone once and be done with it. They do come in handy for leagues of other sizes and making an understandable schedule rather than just playing 2 random teams twice in a typical 12 team/13 week season

[BigBawseRoss]

divisions suck

[ebsteelers]

they are helpful if its going to effect end of the season compensation win your divison win 10 bucks or whatever, but if the schedule already fits, then theres really no reason.

[jordanzs]

The advantage of divisions in dynasty is that people are used to is so they sorta just expect it.

[Gosteelers]

14 teams

We have a North and a South just to remind everyone who was a playoff team the year before and who wasn't.

Also guarantees a non playoff team from the previous year to make the playoffs this year as someone has to win the division.