***My suggestion from the Death of Faction? thread. I'm posting it here in the blogs since I'm sure almost no one frequents the Faction forum.***

My humble thoughts:

This division is based on football divisional systems.

I love the concept, but like many North American coaches I am only able to play "at the wrong times" for this division. I got tired of the old system and retired my Amazons without getting much past the lower leagues, and I started to play under the new system but let my team go inactive to I wouldn't get bombarded by match requests even though my team wasn't on game finder.

I think where this division fails in "its mission" to be like football divisional systems lies in the lack of a set or forced schedule. However, as [L]eague coaches know all too well, dropouts can absolutely destroy the integrity of a closed league as a set schedule progresses. So, it REALLY needs a schedule but having a typical season schedule just isn't feasible. No way.

Anyways, I would like to suggest an idea for Option 1.

I think the Swiss could be the savior of this division... the Swiss-Style Tournament that is. It forces the top teams to actively play to win, the format can handle dropouts really well (and faction encourages playing even when losing to keep from being relegated), and if you pair the 1st round by Team Rating the monster teams help to "whittle" one another down a bit.

Now, obviously each "season" would have to be stretched out a bit longer than 2 weeks. I can't quite remember how many rounds it takes to get a clear-cut 1st place (I think 32 players needs 5 rounds). So, one-week rounds would cut the number of seasons played in a calendar year down to 10 instead of 26. That could be a pisser so maybe demanding a higher level of commitment and something like a weekday round (Monday - Thursday) followed by a weekend round would be feasible... maybe? Not sure, that's a fine line.

Swiss would definitely make this a unique division! I always wanted to set up something like I just suggested in [L]eague, but I never thought I would attract enough coaches. A real, automated division could do that! I could see such a format attracting coaches who appreciate the structure of [L]eague while also giving a different competitive angle to those who have defected to [.B]lack Box. and enjoy the Tour and Minors in [R]anked.

Please consider and head back to the Faction forum thread for discussion to keep it in the Recent Forum Topics.