I’m going to propose three rule changes this year. I will post them to the league page as polls. Majority of those who voted will win. If you abstain you’re counted as neutral.
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Move to a 6 man playoffs format. Yahoo has a three week, 6 man playoff option. The first and second seeds have a bye in the first week of the playoffs. 3 plays 6 and 4 plays 5. Then the remaining teams play the semi-final. In a league with 14 players, only having four make the playoffs is too few. We had an especially unusual year last year where 3 of the top 4 scorers didn’t even make the playoffs. I feel like 4/12 works, but 4/14 is too few. 6/14 feels right. It also gives another reward tier for being at the top - you earn a bye, just like real NFL teams, which gives more meaning to the race at the top up until the end.
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Currently, our league gives the #1-#4 draft slots to the consolation bracket. The original idea here was to make the consolation bracket meaningful to give people something fun to play for after they missed the playoffs. But here’s what I don’t think makes sense: I’m okay with giving the winner of the consolation bowl the #1 pick, to provide that reward factor, but why should the losers of the consolation bowl get picks #2-4? The reverse order of finishing to start the draft is a parity mechanism - the teams that finished at the bottom are unlikely to have good keepers - and we throw a wrench into it for no reason by giving the consolation bowl losers the top pick.
So my proposal is that the consolation bowl winner still gets the #1 pick, but everyone else is seeded in reverse order of standings.
If anyone else has proposals I can include those as polls also.