Current Rule: Three divisional winners and two teams with the highest winning percentage in each conference are Wild Cards and make the playoffs. The division winners get a bye in Round #1 when the two Wild Card teams play each other.
Proposed Change: Starting with the 2017 Season, I would like to see us move to mirror the NFL playoff system.
The three division winners and three (instead of two) wild card teams make the playoffs in each conference.
The three division winners would be seeded 1-2-3 based on record and the Wild Card teams would be seeded 4-5-6 based on record.
Then, like the NFL, the two division winners with the best records get a first round bye.
In the first round, seed #3 hosts #6 and seed #4 hosts #5. Seed #1 and #2 get a bye.
In the second round, the #1 seed hosts the worst surviving seed from the first round and seed #2 hosts the best surviving seed from the first round.
In round three the highest surviving seed hosts the lowest surviving seed. The winner goes to the KRFL Superbowl.
Explanation: This accomplishes a couple of things I'd like to see: 1) One more team makes the play offs making the regular season games later in the season more important. 2) Only two teams get first round byes, emulating the NFL, 3) Again emulating the NFL, a fixed bracket systems is not used. The highest seed team hosts the lowest seeded team in each round.
I threw this out there after the 2016 season and two members responded favorably. Please give this serious consideration.
I'm going to play devils advocate here. My biggest issue with it is that we would then have a 50% chance of making the playoffs with this being a 24 team league. In my opinion this makes the regular season less important and we could very well be seeing teams under .500 making the playoffs.
It seems like there is enough support for putting this to a vote. So it will be put to a vote. Please post the final version of the proposal unless the initial post is it.
