Should there be Divisions in Dynasty Football?

[problemsolver]

divisions suck

This.

[honcho55]

I’m not a fan of divisions, I have enough bad luck/management as it is with H2H matchups. Sig league last year, by far the most points of it were best ball. Still 2nd-ish in total points. Finished 7-6 and barely snuck into the playoffs. We have divisions but they mean absolutely nothing. Had it been top 4 from each, I’d have not made the playoffs.

Even if it’s biased because it happened to me, I’m just not a fan of occurrences like this. Not to say they aren’t people who love that, plus the argument can be made it mimics real football better, maybe?

Anyhow it’s not for me. Sorry for the worthless post haha

[DelawareRiverEagles]

In a league I left, there were 16 teams, 4 divisions of 4 teams each. You played each team in that division twice, each team in your conference once, and then 3 random teams from the other conference. So sometimes you could go more than 2 years without playing a certain team.

Division winners all made playoffs, with 2 wild card spots.

Terrible set up, so I bounced. But after I left, they changed it to 7 team playoffs with 3 wild cards spots. That's marginally better, but it doesn't get at the heart of the issue for me. If there are 16 teams in a league, then I shouldn't have to play a team twice in the regular season. Instead I should just have to play 13 random teams, and the next year I play the 2 other teams I didn't play last season, with 11 random teams.

Not that hard of a concept, but sometimes people fall in love with stupid ideas just because they are gimmicky. Here, the gimmick was the NFL. Why even bother copying what the NFL does? lol.

[Dirty Mike&the Boys]

With the NFL expansion to 18 weeks, it put fantasy leagues in an interesting situation on how they want to operate moving forward.

My 12 team league will be utilizing 14 weeks for regular season matchups, followed by a 6 team playoff during weeks 15-17. This would have you play 3 other teams in the league twice a piece (at random).

I proposed via voting a move to a 3 division setup with 4 teams in each division. These divisions would be formed based on team performance over the initial 3 years of this league. This would see each team play divisional opponents twice, and everyone else in the league once. So far, this is being shot down as owners are suggesting divisions are detrimental to the league.

I just wanted to post on this forum as I know a lot of my league mates are simply against change in general based on our past voting polls. Are divisions in fact 'detrimental' or unnecessary to leagues? I never was a big fan of divisions but the NFL schedule change opened the door for me.

[Pac_Eddy]

If I had my preference, I'd go with double headers and victory points with no divisions. Most of my leagues are in divisions because that's how they started many years ago. I don't know if divisions are detrimental or what effect they have. Doesn't seem to be huge if there is one.

[palevermilion]

Divisions for me are a "fun" thing to have, but depending on league size and playoff seeding I think they can be detrimental.

In a 12-team league with 6 playoff spots it would very realistically be possible that 6 teams in 2 divisions have better records than the division winner in the 3rd division, but if division winners automatically are granted a playoff spot that 6th team would get kinda screwed out of a playoff spot that they otherwise earned. If it's just to give a reason to which teams you play twice I don't think that's the right reason to switch to divisions. Either with divisions or not divisions owners will be playing 3 teams twice and 8 teams once. In your league's case I think the negatives outweigh the positives for switching to divisions.

[meineymoe]

We did the same thing in my one 12 team league - extending the season one more week and going from 4 3-team divisions to 3 4-team divisions.
My leagues that already had a week 17 title game made no changes.

-oo-

[thebeast]

We have four four-team divisions in my main 16 team league and none in my main 12 team league. I am considering getting rid of the divisions as it just adds another qualifier to the playoffs that ends up randomly helping some teams while hurting others. For me, dynasty leagues should be a much about skill as possible and should minimize or eliminate to the extent possible randomness, which is also why I won't play in any league with kickers or DST.

[olmansmith]

Feels like divisions are what you make of them. One of my leagues has it, the other doesn't. If your leaguemates are the kind of people who will be super upset (in a bad way) that they missed out on playoffs despite being a good team because their division is too hard, then its probably not for them.

IMO that adds to the fun/chaos. It can make for great rivalries if you cultivate it - everyone in my league knows that I'm willing to undercut my division makes on any trade offer because our division is so competitive.

[dhanks91]

In my 12 team 1 QB league we use 3- 4 team divisions. The winner of each division gets a playoff spot with the wildcard team getting in based on overall potential points. With the expanded regular season we decided to go with a two week final with the winner being decided on cumulative score. Every off season the division winners have a snake draft to determine who’s in what division for the next season.

Personally this is my favourite set up amongst my leagues. I find there’s less disparity amongst the teams as owners have to be more realistic about their playoff chances.

[atlmoneyman]

At this point all of my leagues have moved to all play.

[problemsolver]

I don't like them but it's not something I would leave a league over.

Edit: in one of my leagues the top two teams the last 3 years are in the same division. So every year the last 3 years the team with the second best record has been the #4 seed, which means they miss out on the first round bye. One year the second best team won 10 games but was seeded behind a 6-7 team that went 6-0 vs its division teams (all of which were in various states of tear down/rebuild) and 0-7 vs everyone else.

[Dirty Mike&the Boys]

At this point all of my leagues have moved to all play.

Last year we implemented an extra weekly game vs the league median, but that was removed via vote a few months ago. I thought that was a good way of balancing out contenders vs pretenders without removing the SNF / MNF fun or madness of needing a guy or two to go off in order to get the W, which doesn't exist with 'all play'.

UPDATE - Divisions surprisingly won the vote, so I split up the 12 teams based on ranking from rate my league into 3 divisions. They did a pretty sound job with their dynasty rankings of our league. We all agreed we will re-evaluate the divisions every 3 years when league renewal is due.

[Ski mask ready]

What we've been doing for a few yrs now is the 1st and 2nd place teams get to pick their divisions with #1 going first and then just taking turns until both divisions are filled. Its actually a lot of fun with new divisions each yr and made for interesting division lineups as each 1st and 2nd place owners see each team differently. Like this yr, the team that has lead the league in scoring the last 3 yrs, he was selected 7th overall, where it would be safe to assume he would be one of the last teams picked as he's scored the highest the last 3 yrs. Anyways just wanted to throw my hat in in regards to what we do so it doesn't get stale.

[I'm the One Who Knox]

My first dynasty league (started in 2013, 12 teams) has 3 divisions of 4. Division winners are seeds 1-3, 4-5 are next best win % and 6 is highest total points for out of the remaining teams. We recast divisions each year putting the top 4 teams together, the worst 4 teams together, etc. This ensures that a lower end team makes the playoffs, and I admit I went this direction so long ago because we were all dynasty first-timers and I didn't want people dropping out after a couple years thinking they had no chance. But I wouldn't do this again... teams from the top division that should get into playoffs often don't, and no one from the bottom division has ever won a title. It's pointless, it works against the competitive nature of FF, and puts luck over skill. I should really change it.

Another 10-team league has 2 divisions of 5 with divisions randomly recast each year. Not seeing the point of that either.

If you're going to have divisions, seems like those should remain the same each year to create rivalries. And I recommend seeding is based completely on win % / points / all-play, if using head-to-head matchups. If not using H-2-H, why have divisions in the first place except for fun with naming them.

In short, you can have some fun with creative approaches, but really not sure divisions are the best idea for FF leagues.