Once again, we see teams who are in the playoff hunt become sellers - because there is no incentive to win. There are some great teams with a very good chance at a championship. Then there are some good teams - but if they think they won't be able to beat the great teams, they start selling.
The KRFL needs to reward teams for winning games. The way the league is setup, you either A) try to build a championship team to win it all or B) try to have as bad of a team as possible so you can get a better FA and rookie draft pick. There is no middle ground.
We have teams that are .500 that have a good chance of winning a wild card selling off. Its a problem. (Note: I would do the same thing, given the system we have).
We need to create a system where every team has a reason to want to win games.
As one of those "good teams who don't think they can be good/great enough make the playoffs much less win any playoff games (after starting 1-4), in my opinion, the simplest solution is to not increase the salary cap during the season (even considering the increase was reduced from $10mil to $5mil a few years ago). Beyond that, it is all the less simple ideas we've exchanged / discussed over the years that there has never been any consensus on.
Just brainstorming but please consider relegation as a remedy. Example: set up 3 divisions: gold, silver and bronze 8 teams in each division take the top 8 teams with all time franchise wins in the gold next 8 teams in the silver bottom 8 teams in the bronze...
play the regular season
Playoffs
Round 1: top 2 teams in the bronze play Round 2: winner of round 1 join top three teams from silver and are ranked 5 thru 8 bottom 4 teams from Gold division play the 3 teams from silver and the winner of round 1
Round 3: 4 winners from Round 2 face off against top 4 teams from the Gold division.
Round 4: 4 winners from Round 3 face off.
Round 5: 2 winners from Round 4 face off in Super Bowl.
At the end of the season:
2 teams with the worse record in the gold move down to the bronze 2 teams with the best record in the silver move up to the gold
2 teams with worse record in the silver move down to the bronze 2 teams with the best record in the bronze move up to the silver
Rationale:
Teams have incentive to rise to higher levels and make more appearances in the playoffs.
There are plenty of variations on the main idea which I am sure could be worked out but it seems like a reasonable remedy which could excite the league members.
Salem wrote ... I would oppose relegation for the simple reason is it is nothing like the NFL - and I would like to mimic the NFL as close as possible.
-Of course mimicking the NFL means teams can tank. But I agree with trying to mimic the NFL while reducing the motivation/incentive to not try to win every game. -Just because an idea got rejected before doesn't mean you cannot bring it up again. Politicians do it all the time.
just to clarify, since I am one of those being alluded to surreptitiously.... I would love to compete; I have been trying to trade for a decent CB for 6 weeks with no luck.... I believe it fairly obvious that a team can not succeed here when its top two CBs are a 7 and 5.... so it's either continue to fight a battle you can not win in the end or do something more logical, accept defeat, and try to regroup for the future....
I'd like to hear Salem's ideas put forth again cause I don't remember them. Eliminating salary cap bump during the season is an idea with merit as is the Steeler's scheme. Let's brainstorm this sucker because like many of you, I hate the perennial sell-off and rush to the bottom.
Here's an idea to reward winning efforts with higher draft positions:
Top four finishers in the league are seeded 21-24 per usual. Bottom four are entered into a lottery for picks 1-4 per usual. The 16 remaining teams have their draft position determined by the reverse order of finish. Thus the fifth best team gets draft pick number 5 and so on. The sixteenth place team gets pick 20. Etc.
Super Bowl Winner pick 24 Super Bowl Runner up pick 23 Conference championship losers picks 22 and 23 Team with the fifth worst record pick 21 Team with the sixth worst record pick 20 ............. Team with the sixth best record pick 6 Team with the fifth best record pick 5 Teams with the four worst records - lottery for picks 1-4
Well this is such a touchy issue. I been here going 3 seasons and this issue is here again. There is some ways to help but you will never completely fix it.
We can propose and propose and like last year it all failed really never with a true consensus. Plus most of the changes require a redraft which is only fair.
There is 2 different and distinct levels in leagues. I am in the lower. Though it happens in all leagues.
