Results of the November GFL Owners Meeting
By: Adam Knoll
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At the November 30thOwners meeting, many ideas were exchanged as the night moved on, however, a bit of league business did get accomplished. Most notably, each team in the GFL got a list of their opponents for the 2012 season, which was highly anticipated. As promised, the hardest schedules were saved for the teams which consistently end up at the top of the standings. After years of clamoring for a fair league-wide schedule, the league finally owns one.
The top three teams last year (Regular Season Wins) will not play any inter-conference games with the American Conference, marking the first time that the league has purposefully tried to match it’s best teams against its better competition. Each National Conference team will play every other team in it’s conference once, yet the top three teams from last year will round robin each other again to complete a ten game schedule. Every other team in the National Conference has at least one inter-conference game, with those finishing with more than six wins last year getting one game, while anyone finishing under six games will have two. In the American conference, each team will play their conference rivals twice, leaving two games apiece to play inter-conference games. In such a way, every team has a set ten game schedule moving forward.
Also brand new this season is a ‘Play-In’ for the playoffs in which the 7th and 8th seed in the National Conference will play the 1st and 2nd seed to see who gains entrance into the regular 8-team playoff tournament the GFL is more accustomed to. The top 6 seeds in the National Conference will have a bye week during the play in games, and the league is working hard to make this a league-wide event to showcase the GFL.
Among other new news, the Waukesha Raiders were provisionally accepted into the American Conference as the league’s 14th franchise. Coming from Semi-pro Baseball lineage, it is hoped the owners of that establishment can use their knowledge to build a successful program.
In the next few months, the league will look forward to hearing ideas on a wide range of topics, including a Pro-Bowl game, televised Championship games and even Game of the Week reporting. The league is in recess until January 11th to come up with ideas on how to better promote the GFL.