Not too surprisingly, there's some fuss going on regarding the decision to remove the L division. Some complaints are being made based on misconceptions on what will happen, and some interesting points have been brought up. The news post about this decision did not include much detail regarding the reasoning behind it. I figured this would be a good place to post some more background and detail about why I chose to go down this path.

Back before L and U was split, we had a sizable number of people who voiced their opinion that Coach Ranking (CR) should be removed as it made people play in a way that they did not agree with. I did not believe that this would be something that would take off to any significant extent as I don't believe that many people are so much against the ranking system that they can be bothered to change divisions over it. Regardless, after some time of listening to these complaints I decided to implement the Unranked division to give coaches the option. It also makes sense from a structural perspective to have this split. Most people would expect a Ranked division to be paired with an Unranked division. It gives people choice, which I think is important.

Fast forward to today, and have games in L and U hampered by the fact that the teams are split. Joining these divisions will improve the situation, and give people greater choice in their opponents and hopefully reduce the time people need to put in to find a match.

Now, Stunty poses a problem. Stunty Leeg was from the start intended to be league mostly for fun. It's directly in violation of one of the main policies of FUMBBL as it's a league completely full of house rules. The division is, however, relatively popular and I have no reason to remove it as such as a lot of people are having fun there.

However, I strongly feel that the unranked division needs to be LRB compliant to avoid the situation other online leagues have where you have to not only know the game itself, but have to learn a whole range of house rules as well. I want this place to be easy to get into assuming you know the base rules (now, I realize that very few people have full understanding of the rules and are used to their own set of house rules, but let's not digress).

Of course, this poses a dilemma. The divisional structure is somewhat broken because of the split of Unranked and League LRB teams, and I don't want to completely remove Unranked as it is now. We also have two distinctly house-rule driven divisions because of the stunty teams. This is a situation I wanted to get away from.

I'm fully aware that there are some leagues and people who do play cross-Stunty/LRB games, and I'm not randomly making a decision to remove this option. I'm fully aware that this causes some issues for some leagues, but I have do believe that this is a sacrifice that makes the site better in the long term.

There are also a few teams that do not fit in LRB nor Stunty (mainly mixed teams) which will be retired out of the system entirely.

With this change, all existing leagues will simply automatically be moved to the new division. The only thing that will happen is that the teams involved in the division will move to their new homes, and and cross-division matches that are scheduled will be unplayable. It will be up to the commisioners of each league to make a decision of whether they want to run in S or U after the switch has been made.

I hope this blog has cleared up some fog that may have found its way into the community, and that you understand where this decision came from. You may or may not agree with me, but there you have it.