The Division E Split Explained

In the 5 years that I’ve worked for FPF, I’ve seen the league grow, become more diverse and yet we continue to try new things and to push boundaries.  When I first started playing in FPF Division 6 and Division E didn’t exist.  I never thought we’d have so many teams in division E that we would need to split the division.  Yet, that is the subject of today’s article.  With 38 teams having registered in the division FPF decided to split the division into E-1 and E-2.

The Great Divide

Teams in higher divisions are often sorted and divided by their “cap hit”.  However, this is difficult in division E this is difficult due to the amount of unknown variables.  Many of the players are new to FPF and we don’t necessarily know their athletic pedigrees or if their skills will translate to playing in FPF.  Instead we divided the teams as we did with division 6 in the winter.  Teams that are new or struggled in their previous season were placed in Division E-2.  Teams in E1 are teams with at least 3 familiar players. 

The Playoffs

Of the 38 teams registered, 32 will make the playoffs in Division E.  There will be two playoff brackets and teams will be moved into either the E1 playoff or the E2 playoff (each bracket will consist of 16 teams).  Once 16 teams from each conference qualify for the playoffs, the seeding of the playoff brackets are determined by a panel of three judges.  The goal is to move teams into the appropriate division once we’ve acquired more information. The panel of judges will be composed of FPF staff members who do not play in division E and will consider the team’s performance and how they’ve improved or regressed through the season as well as strength of schedule.  There will also be a strength of schedule algorithm that we will use to help the judges consider the strength of schedule.  

This will all culminate into a playoff selection show podcast where we announce which playoffs the teams will be competing for.  It should be wild, exciting and permit for some more interesting playoff matchups. The teams thought to be the best in Division E will compete for the Division E1 trophy whereas teams that are not quite considered to be in the top 16 will compete for the Division E2 championship.

The Thought Process

The thinking here is that we don’t have a lot of knowledge about the teams in division E and placing them into separate divisions at the start of the season is problematic for that reason.  Essentially, the decision gets pushed back until the panel will have enough information to assess which teams belong in which playoff tournament.  Furthermore, Division E and Division 6 is at its best when there’s a large playoff and I think that this will allow for some interesting competition from the league’s introductory division.

As always we expect there to be a lot of questions so feel free to reach out to me on social media or by emailing me at [email protected].