State of the Cup

Well, a great season really, which ended with a remarkable final series, in truth the best we may ever see. Ironic, really, that Jeff was the one who fought for the 2-legged final and it was the 2nd leg that prevented the trophy from going back to East Anglia. But in all I felt it was a really great season. Congratulations to our most recent powerhouse in Brooklyn Tigers, and hopefully we'll have a final next season that rivals this one.

Which leads me to my topic:

How do you want next year to look. It occurred to me that as the quality of our teams improve, it will be more and more difficult to arrange the Brooklyn Cup as we now know it. As it was, going into this B-Cup Ellwood and I were still in our national Cups up until the week before the start date of the B-Cup. I suspect that several of us may be in the same or better positions next season.

Over the past 2 B-Cups we've started during HT week 6. That's given us enough time to play home/away with 4-team Groups and have a 2-legged final. I'm not so sure that we'll have all of our teams together by Week 6 next year, and that a Week 7 or Week 8 starting time might be better.

So there are several options, none of which we will decide upon today, but around which I would love some opinions:

1) Cut the amount of time we spend in group play. Right now we spend 6 weeks playing home/away. The only real way to accomplish this would be to go back to the plan of last year, where we spent 7 weeks in 8-team groups, with no return leg. With 6-team groups we could accomplish group play in 5 weeks (we'd have to go to 18 teams); with 4-team groups we could be done in 3 weeks.

2) Change the number of teams that qualify for the playoffs. Right now we have 8 teams out of a 16-team league; we could easily cut that to 4. Not quite as fun that way, but that's the way it goes.

3) Do something even more creative, like have a single-elimination Cup OR spread the competition out over two seasons. I could see a season 23 Qualifying tournament where we whittle the field down from 16 to 8 teams, and then a season 24 "Super League" and "Das Invitational" of 8 teams each.

4) Do nothing. We all know the way the ball bounces in HT; we can call for a Week 6 starting date and all teams who happen to be lucky enough to stay in their national Cups can opt out of the event or suffer walkover losses for each week they're unable to play. If we start week 7 instead of week 6 we should be able to have the same format we do now, except without the 2-legged final round.



I should say that I've seen the light and that I'm not crazy about option #1. The home/away thing has created some nice competitions among teams in this Cup and I think it's best kept the way it is. That's only my opinion, and I'm willing to listen to others--but from previous experience I've got to think that most of the rest of you prefer it that way as well. So that would make option 1) the least palatable of the bunch.

Option 2) is OK, but is a bit of an emergency measure. We could save 2 weeks by cutting the playoffs from 8 to 4 teams and getting rid of the 2-legged playoffs--but then you're making the playoff chase much less important for 12 of the 16 teams, which is really what matters. Playing meaningful Group matches is kind of what makes the B-Cup fun.

Option 3) is really intriguing to me--it seems like the next step up from where we are now--but it assumes a certain amount of risk that we'll have teams available over the course of 2 seasons. We've got enough longevity with most of the teams here that I wouldn't worry TOO much about our teams leaving HT, but it will only be more difficult to schedule the B-Cup in subsequent years as our teams improve. Still, it would be much easier to schedule an 8-team tournament two years from now than a 16-team event, so this option may be advantageous as we look down the road.

Option 4) is simple but sucks at the same time. I really don't want to see original B-Cup teams forced out of the B-Cup due to their teams' successes. And I could live with the occasional walkover loss myself, but don't want to get stuck between choosing between the National and Brooklyn Cups.

At any rate, I'm simply throwing all this out there for your perusal. It may turn out to be nothing, and we'll be able to have a week 6 or 7 starting date with little difficulty, but it never hurts to discuss our options ahead of time.