League Design Workshop #1 – Scheduling
Posted: 1/6/07The Basics
First you need to determine how many teams you’ll have in your league and how many teams you’ll have making the playoffs. Let’s also assume that you’ll not wish to use the NFL week seventeen (because many of the best players will be on teams that’ll be resting them for the NFL playoffs). That leaves sixteen weeks to schedule the league’s regular season and playoffs.
Eight teams, three-four make the playoffs: This one is quite simple, have each team play all the others twice (2 games/opponent * 7 opponents = 14 games). That leaves two weeks for the playoffs. There’s little reason to bother with divisions with eight teams.
Ten teams, three-four make the playoffs: Usually these leagues have two divisions of five teams. You play the in-division opponents twice (8 games) and the other division’s once (5 games). That’ll leave one extra week since the playoffs only require two weeks. Or, you can read on for ideas on how to put that extra week to good use (teaser).
Ten teams, five-eight make the playoffs: Usually these leagues have two divisions of five teams. You play the in-division opponents twice (8 games) and the other division’s once (5 games). The playoffs will be during the three leftover weeks.
Twelve teams, three-four make the playoffs: These leagues should have three divisions of four teams. You play the in-division opponents twice (6 games) and the other division’s once (8 games). The playoffs will be during the two leftover weeks.
Twelve teams, five-eight make the playoffs: These leagues should have four divisions of three teams. You play the in-division opponents twice (4 games) and the other division’s once (9 games). The playoffs will be during the three leftover weeks.
Fourteen teams, three-four make the playoffs: There’s little reason to bother with divisions since you’ll want to have every team play all the others for a thirteen week regular season. There will be one leftover week since the playoffs will require just two weeks. So you can schedule one extra regular season game (playing one team twice or playing one game against the league average). Or, you can read on for ideas on how to put that extra week to good use (teaser).
Fourteen teams, five-eight make the playoffs: There’s little reason to bother with divisions since you’ll want to have every team play all the others for the thirteen week regular season. The playoffs will be during the three leftover weeks.
Sixteen teams, three-four make the playoffs: These leagues should have two divisions of eight teams. You play the in-division opponents twice (14 games) and don’t play the other division at all until the playoffs start. The playoffs will be during the two leftover weeks.
Sixteen teams, five-eight make the playoffs: These leagues often have four divisions of four teams. The playoffs will require three weeks, so you’re left with thirteen for the regular season. You’ll probably want to schedule two match-ups against each divisional opponent (6 games), so that leaves seven games for the other twelve teams. You need to be creative. Creative ideas will follow (teaser). Without creativity, you’d be forced to randomly pick seven of the available twelve for each team to face. Or you could have play the divisional opponents thrice (9 games) leaving four others (ie, one other division). Have the East division play the West and the North play the south. It’s a lot like baseball before inter-league play (E-W in one conference and N-S in the other, perhaps rotating the combinations each year). Regardless, you can’t schedule every team to face off against every other team without ways to generate more match-ups.
Other considerations
Luck – it’s a constant fixture of fantasy sports. You can get the 2nd best score of the week and lose. You can also get the 2nd worst score of the week and win. There are plenty of cases where one playoff game is 120-115 and the other is 85-75. That sure stinks for the guy who scores 115 (and how lucky is the guy who got 85). But can we do anything about this?
Of course we can. Let’s start with the playoffs. Say, for example, you’ve got six playoff teams. Two get a bye week and four play week fourteen. How about making it a survivor-style playoffs? The two that get the best scores advance. Remove the two with the worst scores and then add in the two with byes for week fifteen. Do the same, removing the two with the worst week fifteen scores leaving two for the final week. The week sixteen championship game is still head-to-head, but you’ll assure that the two best teams (based on weeks fourteen and fifteen scores) get there.
This can also provide a way to utilize an extra playoff week. Say you’ve got four playoff teams and three weeks for the playoffs. You can just eliminate one team per week using this survivor-style system. Perhaps even give the top team a bye (immunity) the first week.
There are also some ideas for the regular season. One way is to schedule double-headers. That way the 2nd best team is at worst 1-1 and the 2nd worst can be no better than 1-1. You could even have triple-headers. You can also schedule games against the league average score. (Technically, it ought to be the league median score so that half the teams always win and half always lose.) Many league management services allow this option.
I’ve set up schedules where you play single-headers when the NFL has teams on bye and double-headers when the NFL doesn’t. One way to assure that every team plays all the others in a league of sixteen is to do exactly this. Eighteen games (six divisional plus twelve non-divisional) can be managed over thirteen weeks by having five double headers. If you don’t do double-headers every week, they can be especially unfair during the bye weeks (giving double weight to a week when you have your best RB and starting QB on bye seems too harsh).
I’ve also used double-headers to schedule extra in-divisional games. Say you’ve got twelve teams. You can play seventeen games in thirteen weeks by having four double-headers. That allows nine divisional games and eight against the other teams (assuming three divisions of four teams).
Playing a game against every team is another way to manage risk. If I don’t have to face off against a portion of the teams, I might get lucky and avoid the better ones or get unlucky and avoid the worst ones. Two teams competing for a wildcard slot might have had very unequal schedules. I’d personally rather double-headers and play everyone than risk having an unequal quality of opponents.
There’s also the possibility of doing some combination of the ideas above. Like having double-headers every week – one head-to-head game and one against the league average score. Or having the second games against the league average score when the NFL has bye weeks and two head-to-heads when not.
Another idea is to randomize the divisional alignments every year. Everyone is paying extra attention to the league during the annual rookie/free agent draft. You can have everyone roll for the coming season’s divisions and schedules right after that ends. I use the Irony Games' Dice Server site for that and I’ll provide more details on that in an upcoming article. Basically, the idea here is to give everyone a fair shot at not having a stacked division. As you know from participation in mature dynasty leagues, a division with two top tier teams makes it nearly impossible for anyone else to get into the playoffs.
One more consideration that I always make sure to do: I don’t schedule divisional games during the bye weeks. Head-to-head record (or divisional record) is often the top tiebreaker and it’s a shame to have someone lose a tiebreaker due to having an unfortunate combination of players on bye in that one important week with a key divisional match-up. This of course only applies if you have divisions and it’s possible to avoid divisional games for all the bye weeks. In the two twelve team league set-ups that I provided, you can usually have all (or at worst all but one) divisional games in the non-bye weeks.