What Expansion Means for Crossover And The Schedule?

[Devise 4,475]

Now that the cat is out of the bag and we can all speculate on which teams and logo's the two new expansion franchises are going to, the focus can be switched to the actual what's of expansion. Most importantly, what does it mean for playoff seeding, more specifically playoff crossover and the oft under-looked aspect, STHS scheduling. 

 

To start with playoff seeding, it is my belief that it would make the most sense to remove crossover entirely. I feel that with 6 teams per conference, it makes far more sense to have teams battling it out for either 3 or 4 playoff spots per conference. I think right now the league may even be healthy enough to justify 4, ergo 8 teams making the playoffs. But if it deemed that it would create some more competitive races if only 6 made it, I wouldn't be opposed to that either. 

 

Another reason I believe this makes sense is due to STHS scheduling. For those who don't know, we try to build as balanced of a schedule as possible. With a 72 game season, the current 10 team format actually winds up being perfect for how STHS scheduling works. Right now each team is set to play each other 8 times, so with 9 other teams, the scheduling works out perfectly. Changing this, even if you think you can manually make the math work has at times caused problems. Let me make clear the problems are on STHS's end. 

 

In Season 65 when we had 9 teams, and while you'd think that STHS would simply make sense of us having each team play each other 9 times as opposed to 8, it would inexplicably increase the number of games per season to a higher number when changed. This leaves us with some interesting questions with 12 teams. How do we fairly do scheduling? The most logical choice would be to have each team play each other 6 times, and then find a way to doll out the other 6 games in a fair manner. One idea would be to doll out the other 6 games as follows, 5 each to your other inter-conference opponents, and then reactivate the rivalry system and have the teams designated as rivals inside each conference play each other for an 8th time. No matter what approach we take it will be impossible to maintain an even balance system, so I think it would make a lot more sense regardless to put more focus on teams inside conferences playing each other more often, especially in a world where there is no playoff crossover.