Division Realignment

[invisibulman]

I am in a 12 team league coming to the end of its 4th season. The teams are split into two conferences (World and US) of 6. The top team from each division plus two wild cards make the playoffs. From the beginning, the World Conference has been the stronger of the two. As time went on the gap only widened. This year, things have come to a head with the top 5 teams in points scored hailing from that conference. This has prompted some cries for a realignment. I'm a bit on the fence. Wanted to get some thoughts on whether you like the idea of realigning to balance the conferences. If so, how do you go about it?

World Conference:
Egypt (8-2) 2280pts
Latvia (6-4) 2398.5pts
London (6-4) 2201pts
Tripoli (6-4) 2171pts
Caracas (5-5) 2058.5pts
Italy (3-7) 1980pts

USA Conference:
Iowa (7-3) 2031pts
Jacksonville (6-4) 2007.5pts
Detroit (4-6) 1666pts
Seattle (4-6) 1867pts
Myrtle Beach (3-7) 1784pts
Fort Wayne (2-8) 1889.5pts

Latvia and Tripoli are both going to lose this week... leaving two teams from the US Conference as virtual locks for the playoffs. I am anticipating this raising the ire of some owners.

[nofears2124]

I do this every few years in my fantasy league. I based my realignment on past team overall track records over a three year span. I use the overall record during those seasons and realign moving top teams on opposite division and working my way down to last according to overall standing and things were much closer than before.

[ericanadian]

The only time I recommend realignment is with the addition of new teams.

@nofears: If you're going to realign semi-regularly, why even have divisions at all? They'd be meaningless.

[nofears2124]

The only time I recommend realignment is with the addition of new teams.

@nofears: If you're going to realign semi-regularly, why even have divisions at all? They'd be meaningless.

Let me rephrase my comment i do it every 5 years if division is lopsided

[kiddragonsoft]

We pick divisions every year at draft out of a hat. With the division winners from the previous year the division head.

[TheOracle]

I've never used divisions (why make fantasy football more random and luck-based than it already is?) but here's my idea:

First, pick the two best franchises. You could do it by champion/runner up this year, total money winnings over the course of the league, most points scored the past two seasons, however. Just decide who the best two teams are. Then, you have a draft of teams they want in their division. You would have one team pick first, then the other team pick twice, then alternate. Before the draft you could flip a coin and give the winner the choice of first pick or the next two picks. Go ahead and tell me this draft wouldn't be awesome- you have your two most successful owners basically being forced to tell everybody what they think of their teams. Imagine the smack talking, the jokes, the guys lobbying to be picked or not to be picked, the everythingfantasyfootballisabout that would be going on.

I understand this isn't the purest idea with regard to creating parity, but the difference between this and some algorithm you implement to reshuffle the divisions fairly would probably be minimal and less significant than the week-to-week variance in scoring. If your league is just a random group of guys with only internet connections maybe this wouldn't work, but if you're all friends this would be awesome.

[TheReverend]

We change divisions every year. 4 divisions 3 teams each. We do it in order of points scored from previous season. 1,5,9
2,6,10
3,7,11
4,8,12

This has been working pretty well so far.